Tino Gerschler says goodbye to retirement
Sassnitz-Mukran, 5 December 2024 – The Managing Director of Baltic Port Rail Mukran GmbH (BPRM), Tino Gerschler, retired at the end of November and handed over "the baton" to Christina Stoll. Ms. Stoll had also been Managing Director since July of this year and had previously worked as a dispatcher since BPRM was founded in 2011. She has been employed by Deutsche Bahn at the Mukran site since 1987. With 15 employees, BPRM is a small rail transport company that operates as a subsidiary of Mukran Port and DESAG as a “last-mile railroad” in the ferry port.
Tino Gerschler has spent almost 40 years of his professional life at the Mukran site and can therefore look back on the port's history since its foundation. He started as a technologist at Deutsche Reichsbahn in the Mukran ferry complex in January 1986, several months before the opening of the Mukran - Klaipeda (former Soviet Union) rail ferry connection on October 2, 1986. The young university graduate was quickly given a lot of responsibility. After just three years, he was responsible for a team of 830 employees as head of the cargo handling department. At that time, that was the number of people involved in the reloading of goods from the Russian broad gauge to the European standard gauge and the reaxing of freight wagons alone. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the flow of goods shifted and the port's business areas also changed. Tino Gerschler went through various stations and management positions and always remained loyal to the railroad and our port! He has been Managing Director at BPRM since 2014. Today, the port railroad is also on a solid footing thanks to the commitment of the former Managing Director of the ferry port, Harm Sievers.
When asked what he particularly remembers, he talks enthusiastically about the pilot train that arrived at Mukran Port from Xian in central China in 2019 and reached its destination in Germany in just 13 days instead of the usual 14 to 16 days. Participation in rail transports via the “New Silk Road” was a success story for the port of Mukran and its subsidiaries, which unfortunately only lasted until the outbreak of the Ukraine war. In this context, Tino Gerschler gladly and with visible pride reported on negotiations to start China transports in Kaliningrad, Russia, in 2019. When some participating partners there doubted that BPRM was a serious negotiating partner for the Russian state railroad, the head of the Kaliningrad railroad replied that there are only two German railroad companies with which the Russian state railroad cooperates: Deutsche Bahn AG and BPRM.
We wish Mr. Gerschler all the best and would like to thank him for sharing his story with us here. Mr. Gerschler will continue to be available to the company in an advisory capacity.
