Freight is the poor relation of the rail sector, certainly in terms of public recognition. While passenger services make news headlines daily, the movement of raw materials for manufacturing, fuel for electricity generation and consumer goods for our shops takes place across the network, day-in, day-out, without the barest mention.
That’s a surprise because freight is one of the few success stories of the privatised railways. During the past 15 years, the sector has grown by around 60% and is predicted to grow by another 30% in the next decade – the equivalent of 240 additional freight trains a day. The cost per tonne carried has fallen in real terms during that period and, unlike the passenger sector, freight goes about its business without any direct subsidy from government.
And yet, despite all these achievements, freight gets little recognition and remains low-profile. Tim Robinson, who was recruited five months ago to the newly created position of freight director at Network Rail, hopes this will change. “As I’m sure you can imagine, we are not used to sitting around waiting for plaudits. Positive public recognition is not something that features in our lives,” he says.
“Certainly, the freight message has not been that well represented. So, I guess, I can understand why people don’t know what has been going on – because no one has actually told them. But much progress in terms of reducing capacity bottlenecks and easing loading gauge restrictions has been made. And, as a result, many freight operators on the network find that their businesses are flourishing.”
Over the years, the shape of the rail freight sector has changed dramatically. During Britain’s industrial past, most rail freight operated on its own infrastructure, hauling mainly coal from pit to plants and steel from furnaces to ports. There were lots of small-scale self-contained segments of freight operations that had limited interactions with the passenger side of the network.
However, over time, that changed, as rail freight started to play a greater role in the modern logistics supply chain. The UK is now predominantly an imports nation, with finished goods needing to get from ports to people. As a result, the growth of inter-modal containerised traffic has been phenomenal, and the freight network has been developed to mirror more closely the geographical location of major conurbations.
The problem is that most containerised loads come into ports such as Southampton in the south of England, and Felixstowe, on the east coast, requiring domestic transit through or around the large towns and cities heading north.
As a result, Network Rail has needed to deliver a substantial programme of enhancements for rail freight through its Strategic Freight Network Fund to handle the growing traffic levels.
In 2011, work was completed on two significant loading gauge enhancement projects for Southampton and Felixstowe at a combined cost of £100 million. The projects have had a significant impact on freight services from those ports, now enabling them to carry to the West Coast main line the 9ft 6in high-cube containers increasingly used by global shipping companies. This, says Robinson, has already taken tens of thousands of lorry journeys off the roads, easing congestion and reducing carbon emissions.
“The deep sea ports of Southampton and Felixstowe are the biggest import locations by some margin,” he adds. “So, much work has been carried out in terms of gauge enhancements, reducing bottlenecks and removing the need for freight and passenger trains to interact with each other.”
That work is continuing. Network Rail is currently working on the Ipswich Chord – a £41 million investment that will see the construction of a new 1km stretch of track north of Ipswich goods yard, linking the East Suffolk line and Great Eastern main line on part of the site of a former meat factory.
Today, most of East Anglia’s freight trains that need to travel from the port of Felixstowe to the north have to go down the busy Great Eastern main line, through London and up the West Coast main line to save having to turn around in the sidings adjacent to Ipswich station in order to use the shorter cross-country Felixstowe-to-Nuneaton route. The Ipswich Chord will remove that bottleneck and free up capacity for both passenger and freight services.
Once this work and Network Rail’s other enhancements of the line from Felixstowe to Nuneaton via Ipswich, Ely and Peterborough are completed in 2014, the route will provide more direct journeys for freight trains travelling from Felixstowe to the Midlands, the North West and Scotland, and the potential for faster freight journeys to Yorkshire.
Work has also been undertaken to allow freight operators to run longer, and, therefore, heavier, trains. In the late 1990s, some of the leading freight companies started buying new, primarily American-made Class 66 locomotives, which had better pulling capabilities than their predecessors. That meant more wagons could be pulled at any one time, meaning the network needed to be upgraded accordingly.
This prompted a programme of axle weight modifications, upgrading track structures on certain lines from RA7 to RA10 to take these new locomotives and heavier trains.
Indeed, the major freight operators – Colas Rail, DB Schenker, Direct Rail Services (DRS), GB Rail Freight and Freightliner Group – are starting to drive innovation on to the network in other ways. Last year, DRS launched a new service from PD Ports’ Teesport container terminal using an ultra-low wagon that can transport high-cube boxes to areas of the country previously inaccessible by rail.
The service, operating between Teesport’s rail head at its fast-growing container terminal in the North East and the Stobart Group’s Widnes intermodal rail depot, uses SuperLow 45 wagons made by Nottinghamshire-based WH Davis that are capable of carrying high-cube containers over non-gauge enhanced and height restricted routes, opening up almost the entire UK rail network to the larger boxes. Previously, high-cube containers, which measure 9ft 6in in height compared with the standard 8ft 6in, could not be transported to such a wide area of the country by rail because of low bridges, tunnels and railway stations.
Robinson says that the DRS decision to buy the ultra-low wagon was a good example of how freight operators can innovate to offer improved services to their customers. “DRS had a particular need for that wagon, the company had struck upon an opportunity for it to grow its business at Teesport, but the business it picked up was high-gauge traffic.
“The volumes were not sufficient for us to build a business case to invest in complete through-route gauge clearance. It was the sort of circumstance where we looked at it and thought ‘what’s the right value for money solution here?’. And, actually, it was to build a specific wagon. It was a good example of where a freight operator and a wagon manufacturer have come up with a good answer,” he says.
Meanwhile, Freightliner recently invested in a new fleet of Class 70 locomotives that will allow it to run longer trains. Robinson says this investment will help it to manage capacity issues out of Felixstowe. “The key to our success over the next few years will be around how we work effectively with our customers, understanding what they want, and transparently playing off the benefits of a rolling stock or a network solution. Freight network development is about finding a successful blend of the two,” he says.
Looking to the future, Robinson says he expects freight traffic to continue growing as containerised business from countries such as India and China shows no sign of abating. He says Network Rail is fully committed to freight and points to the fact that it is actually the biggest single buyer of freight services on the network. “We remain very positive about rail freight – we have delivered a lot of value through engineering projects over the course of the last five to 10 years – but there’s a lot more to do,” he says.