SBB's freight arm is SBB Cargo AG. In 2003, SBB Cargo carried nearly 55 million tonnes. SBB Cargo has its headquarters in the northern border city of Basel, a "Euro-hub" handling traffic between Italy and Benelux, northern Germany and Scandinavia.

With a promise of two days from tree to supermarket for Sicilian oranges, SBB Cargo is a vital link in the chain that speeds the fruit nearly 2000 km northwards. SBB Cargo express trains take over the special citrus wagons from their Italian colleagues at the Swiss border town of Chiasso, recoupling them for different destinations in Switzerland, or taking them on to Basel where they are handed on to the German DB Cargo.

The "citrus train" is just one example of three-way cooperation. The transport of "ecoballi" is another: huge foil-wrapped cylinders of household and industrial rubbish, shredded and pressed, and exported from Naples, which has a refuse disposal problem, across Switzerland to the German city of Krefeld for use as fuel to produce energy.

Whatever the cargo, it is evidently more efficient for customers and rail companies alike to work together across borders.

But cooperation does not rule out competition. Although the SBB cooperates with its German equivalent, DB, it rebuffed DB's overtures for a merger because it did not want to give up its independence.

Instead, SBB Cargo formed a strategic alliance with a private German company, HGK, in 2001, and in June 2002 the two of them set up a subsidiary, SRC Köln, to handle freight transport between the North Sea ports and Basel, and eventually to Italy. Nevertheless, SBB Cargo says its operations in Germany are not aimed at taking business away from DB, but at finding new customers by persuading them to switch from road to rail.

Meanwhile, the private Swiss company, BLS, which operates the important Lötschberg tunnel on the route to Italy, also created its own freight subsidiary, BLS Cargo. And in June 2002 DB Cargo took a 20% share of its capital. SBB Cargo thus has a competitor on the Swiss and German routes.

As far as the southern leg is concerned, SBB Cargo had long cooperated with its Italian equivalent, FS Trenitalia Cargo, and even planned to form a joint company with them, as it has with HGK. However, the plan collapsed over problems with punctuality, and SBB Cargo decided instead to set up its own subsiduary based in Italy. In Italy too it will be competing with BLS Cargo, which has a private Italian company, Ambrogio, as a partner with a 2.3% share of its capital.

The introduction of the new timetable in 2004 saw SBB Cargo increase the number of its freight trains in Germany fourfold, and in Italy fivefold.