NRA FREIGHT WINNER
ANDY COWARD turns the spotlight on VTG Rail, winner of the NRA Freight & Logistic Achievement award
The rail freight sector has gone through a particularly challenging and difficult time over the past few years. Some of the more traditional traffic flows have declined, none of them more dramatically than coal.
While passenger operators are enjoying unprecedented levels of growth, the same cannot always be said of the freight sector, which still faces intense competition from road hauliers in an ever-competitive market.
However, there is still a strong market for rail freight from various sectors of industry, who see rail as the only viable way of transporting large quantities of materials around the country.
With this in mind, it was the innovative way that one company has taken on the challenges of a changing marketplace, by modifying otherwise redundant wagons and re-engineering them for a new use, that caught the eye of the National Rail Awards judges.
VTG Rail was adjudged winner of the Freight and Logistics Achievement award at the prestigious ceremony at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel on September 21, for two ‘repurposing’ projects that involved the conversion and reengineering of 24 redundant coal hoppers for further use with the aggregates industry, and the shortening of container flat wagons to improve fuel efficiency and increase train capacity size.
The NRA judges for this category were looking for quantified evidence that the entry delivered at least one of the following:
Measurable benefits for the sector’s end users, freight and logistics customers.
Improvements in rail infrastructure provision, or in freight train operational equipment or practices that demonstrably enhance the rail freight sector’s performance in areas such as safety, customer service, environmental impact, and efficiency or value for money.
Significant wider network benefits for other users of the transport system - for example, by allowing better use of railway capacity, or by removing significant volumes of lorry traffic from the roads.
It can be argued that VTG Rail’s winning entry fulfilled all of the judges’ criteria with its innovative ‘repurposing’ projects.
VTG Rail has grown steadily over the past few years to become the largest freight leasing company in the UK, with a fleet of 2,000 wagons of various types, divided into three main categories. The Bulk Fleet contains vehicles for the transportation of dry goods and finished products, the Tank Fleet wagons are used for the conveyance of a wide range of liquids, and the Intermodal Fleet comprises a variety of platforms for the carriage of containerised goods.
As well as the vehicles that are on hire to its customers, VTG Rail also has a stock of freight wagons available should they be required by a new customer. The company provides ‘wet leasings’ to customers - this means that VTG manages everything about the wagons being leased, including maintenance, performance and costs of the service. The company aims to take the hard work out of wagon leasing, so that customers (in theory) just have to fill the wagons that are supplied to them.
The decline in the coal freight market may have had a devastating effect on one aspect of the rail freight story, but VTG Rail came up with an innovative way of re-engineering a fleet of 24 ‘ Vulcan’ coal hoppers.
Porterbrook Leasing had been storing the wagons, which otherwise would probably have been scrapped. VTG purchased them and initiated a conversion process to make them suitable for use on aggregates trains, which is one aspect of rail freight that is still enjoying a healthy level of growth each year.
As coal carriers, the wagons were 18.3 metres long, with a maximum payload of 75 tonnes. The repurposing project involved them being shortened (due to the denser nature of stone traffic compared with coal), to maintain the existing axle loads while maintaining a similar payload.
The re-engineered wagons can now carry 78 tonnes of aggregates, which is approximately 30% more than they would have been able to carry pre-modification. This also means that more aggregates can be carried on standard-length trains than would have been possible had the wagons remained as unmodified ‘ Vulcan’ coal hoppers.
The project has also been financially beneficial, with the company’s repurposing project effectively ‘recycling’ redundant wagons ( but with plenty of working life left in them) for a new purpose at a fraction of the cost of building new wagons.
While VTG has been responsible for the construction of many new freight wagons in use throughout the UK, the conversion of these wagons was found to be approximately 40% cheaper than the cost of building new wagons for the same purpose.
VTG has also tackled the repurposing of a number of ‘Megafret’ low deck height container flat wagons, by shortening each vehicle by five metres. This project has allowed the flat wagons to be better equipped for carrying 45ft containers.
The shortening of the flat wagons, which are now known as ‘Optifret’, has allowed less gaps between the containers. This has helped to improve fuel efficiency on container trains, due to the reduction in air turbulence between wagons, as well as allowing up to four additional containers to be included in a standard-length container train formation.
The importance of the freight sector in the rail industry cannot be underestimated, and it is clear that many freight operators and users are now adapting their businesses to a changing marketplace. Initiatives such as those adopted by VTG Rail show that relatively simple measures can solve bigger issues, and make better use of freight paths available on the railway.
Innovation to a changing rail freight sector is clearly the key to a brighter future.