Wagonload has run its course
With DB Cargo finally phasing out its less-than-trainload network, PAUL SHANNON looks at the decline of wagonload traffic since rail freight passed into the private sector
The decline of wagonload freight is nothing new. Ever since the 1960s, the railway has edged inexorably towards the full trainload model for commercial freight.
The automated hump yards of the 1955 Modernisation Plan were becoming obsolete even as they opened for business, and during the 1960s and 1970s British Rail worked hard to raise the proportion of dedicated company trains. The traditional wagonload network that used vacuum-braked and unfitted wagons closed to all traffic except coal and scrap metal in 1983, and to those two commodities as well a year later.
The former wagonload flows were either lost to rail or were transferred to the growing Speedlink network, which carried only modern air-braked stock and focused on Several chemical plants in Cheshire generated traffic for the Enterprise network. 66100 has just arrived at Albion Chemicals, Sandbach, to clear out the last tank wagons from the site on February 14 2007. The traffic here had been hydrochloric acid to Dalry. larger consignments of freight serving a smaller number of locations. But Speedlink ultimately suffered in the same way as its predecessor - its fixed costs were too high for the variable and often small amounts of traffic on offer. Its closure took effect on July 8 1991.
Although BR resolutely distanced itself from the word ‘wagonload’, its non-bulk division Railfreight Distribution continued to operate some less-than-trainload flows after the demise of Speedlink.
There was, for example, a train between Cheshire and Scotland that carried chemicals from several different loading points, while a slimmed-down national network was retained for European traffic in readiness for the expected Channel Tunnel freight bonanza. The bulk division Trainload Freight steered clear of less-than-trainload freight except for the Metals sub-division, which ran a discrete network for steel and scrap traffic until 1992.
As privatisation beckoned, the business managed by Trainload Freight, together with part of the Railfreight Distribution portfolio, was divided between three ‘companies’ - Transrail, Mainline Freight and Loadhaul, with the expectation that they would compete with each other and be sold off separately.
In July 1999 EWS’s charismatic leader Ed Burkhardt was ejected from the board, and the company’s aspiration to treble rail freight in ten years was quickly forgotten.
Freed from some of the constraints of British Rail, the three concerns sought fresh opportunities. Transrail covered a wider geographical area than the others, and had inherited almost all of the former wagonload flows that survived in trainload or semitrainload form. It therefore decided to relaunch a wagonload product, with a small number of strategic interchange points ( yards!) and a timetable of trunk services and trip workings. Dubbed Enterprise, the network went live in September 1994.
Enterprise not only provided for those flows that had managed to survive the closure of Speedlink in either trainload or less-thantrainload form, it also managed to attract new business. Some customers, such as Co-Steel at Sheerness, returned to rail on a significant scale once they were no longer compelled to sponsor their own block train. Co-Steel was also significant insofar as it lay outside the core Transrail area.
It wasn’t long before Enterprise started to look like a small-scale reincarnation of Speedlink. Transrail even managed to dovetail some of its services with the European wagonload network, which at that time was still run by Railfreight Distribution.
When the sell-off finally happened in February 1996, Transrail, Mainline Freight and Loadhaul were recombined into a single company which would soon be known as English, Welsh and Scottish Railway (EWS). Further amalgamation took place in early 1997, when EWS took over the heavily loss-making Railfreight Distribution.
EWS was, if anything, even keener on lessthan-trainload freight than Transrail. It was only natural for it to integrate the European traffic into its domestic network. And given that it covered the entire British system, EWS was well placed to add new tentacles to Enterprise, as well as increasing the service frequency on core routes. By mid-1997, EWS ran no less than five daily Enterprise trains each way on its busiest corridor between Warrington and Carlisle.
The growth continued. Timber was a particular success, with more than 20 loading points in operation in 1998-99. Flows of paper and pulp were gained, as were several highly prized movements of consumer goods for companies such as Superdrug and Safeway. Seed potatoes even returned to rail, albeit on a small scale.
The East Coast ports were better served once EWS reopened Doncaster Belmont yard as a marshalling point, joining the existing yards at Wembley, Eastleigh, Newport, Bescot, Warrington, Tees, Carlisle and Mossend. And European connections became faster when, in December 1998, EWS launched a direct service from Cologne in northern Germany to Wembley, by-passing the marshalling yards of northern France. By May 1999 Enterprise served well over a hundred UK locations, stretching from the Far North of Scotland to Cornwall and East Kent.
In retrospect, it was all too good to last. In July 1999 EWS’s charismatic leader Ed Burkhardt was ejected from the board, and the company’s aspiration to treble rail freight in ten years was quickly forgotten. The railway would begin a retreat towards focusing on those heavy, regular freight flows which gave the best return on resources. The same economic realities that had justified the demise of the rural pick-up goods train in the 1960s, and of Speedlink in 1991, would call into question the survival of Enterprise.
To begin with, the main change was a dwindling of new wagonload freight flows. Most newly acquired traffic followed the trainload model. That change in itself would be enough to trigger the slow demise of Enterprise, because many flows have a limited lifespan and there would need to be an influx of new traffic just to keep the business stable.
Before long, some of the more marginal Enterprise trip workings were discontinued. Among the losses were wagonloads of lighting products from Bodmin (conveyed by the Bodmin & Wenford Railway for the first part of their journey). Other casualties were Cerestar starch from Trafford Park; pulp and paper products to and from Barrow-in-Furness, Workington and Corpach; and bottled water from Inverness. There was also a major cull
Sometimes the withdrawal of an uneconomic trip working would adversely affect the loadings on a previously healthy trunk train.
of log traffic - all raw timber flows were axed except those from the West Highland Line and Carlisle to Chirk, and occasional trainloads from the lineside loading point at Kinbrace.
Meanwhile, a few gains suggested that EWS wasn’t giving up on wagonload traffic. In 2001 the Potter Group opened a new railhead at its Knowsley depot, and began receiving imported paper from Immingham for Stora Enso. Although this was essentially a trainload flow, it called at Warrington Arpley yard to collect wagonload traffic from mainland Europe. Stora Enso was a major EWS customer at that time, with a mixture of trainload and wagonload flows serving its distribution centres at Barking, Selby, Knowsley, Avonmouth and Glasgow Deanside.
In a few cases, less-than-trainload volumes could even justify infrastructure investment. In 2002, Ineos Chlor opened a new railhead on the Runcorn Folly Lane branch, catering for wagonloads of sodium hydroxide (also known as caustic soda) to Scotland. In the same year, the Thurso branch was upgraded to carry wagonloads of building materials from the Scottish Central Belt for Thurso Building Supplies. And a former colliery branch was reopened to establish a railhead for Volkswagen Audi at Birch Coppice, receiving car parts from Germany via a trip working from Bescot yard.
Alongside these gains, Enterprise began to carry intermodal traffic, notably from Tilbury to six regional distribution terminals and later from Thamesport and other ports. The mixing of conventional wagons and deep-sea containers on the same train was something rarely seen before in the UK, given that in BR days almost all container traffic had been allocated to Freightliner.
The overall trend, however, was still down. The Knowsley train soon became a dedicated block working, while the Thurso traffic fizzled out in 2004. The intermodal business grew rapidly, but gradually switched to trainload operation serving a smaller number of terminals in direct competition with Freightliner.
Wagonload traffic via the Channel Tunnel, which had been faring better than containers and swapbodies, suffered badly in November 2001 when waves of migrants seeking illegal
Wagonload traffic via the Channel Tunnel suffered badly in November 2001 when waves of migrants seeking illegal entry to the UK caused all services to be suspended.
entry to the UK caused all services to be suspended. The immediate casualties of that stoppage included several independently owned general distribution terminals, such as Creative Logistics at Salford (which had opened as recently as 2000) and DCA Link at Cardiff Canton. Confidence was dented, and it was all too easy for small-scale flows to switch to road.
EWS’s aim was to achieve full loadings on trunk Enterprise trains, and only run trip workings when there were viable quantities of traffic on offer. In reality, this was no easier to achieve than it had been in Speedlink days - sometimes the withdrawal of an uneconomic trip working would adversely affect the loadings on a previously healthy trunk train.
Examples of poor loadings included Mossend-Aberdeen, which often only carried a few wagons with pipes for Laurencekirk, and Eastleigh-Wembley, which conveyed irregular volumes of gas oil for railway fuelling points. And on the Far North Line, the loss of Safeway containers to Georgemas Junction forced EWS to withdraw a service that could have attracted other customers.
However, an interesting survivor on this route was oil from Grangemouth to Lairg. It began life as an Enterprise flow in late 2001, but ended up running as a very short block train from the mid-2000s until its withdrawal in 2017.
The Enterprise network was viewed by some as a nursery for potential trainload traffic. Conversely, it proved its worth when trainload flows declined and could no longer justify dedicated resources.
Imported steel from Hoo Junction to Wolverhampton switched from trainload to Enterprise operation in 2003, catering for irregular volumes and giving the customer the benefit of a ‘little and often’ service. Clay from St Blazey to Cliffe Vale and scrap metal from Plymouth to Cardiff were combined into a single Enterprise train. And export clay from Cornwall to Sezzadio (Italy) switched from trainload to wagonload operation European traffic used to include all kinds of goods loaded in anonymous vans, but the only traffic carried that way today is bottled water to Daventry. 92036 approaches Culvert Road Junction with the 0707 departure from Dollands Moor on March 31 2015. The train’s destination is Wembley, but it will simply be staged there awaiting its onward path to Daventry.
in 2005, with the loaded wagons routed via Eastleigh and Wembley and the empties returning via Cardiff.
However, competition from other freight operating companies began to detract from Enterprise carryings. An early example of this was the transfer of Scottish cement traffic from EWS to Freightliner Heavy Haul in 2002, creating a traffic shortfall on EWS trains to Aberdeen and Inverness.
The North of Scotland took another hit in 2005, when GB Railfreight took over the mud oil traffic from Harwich to Aberdeen. This change also led EWS to replace its Wembley-Harwich Enterprise train with a lightweight Saturdays-only trip conveying gas oil tanks directly to the Freightliner fuelling point at Ipswich. EWS’s only flow of timber, serving the Kronospan plant at Chirk, would switch to AMEC-Spie haulage from early 2007.
In 2005-06, Channel Tunnel wagonload traffic showed some signs of recovery, although concerns over costs and delays in mainland Europe remained. A trial movement of aluminium ingots from Holyhead to Braunau am Inn (Austria) for Anglesey Aluminium took place in 2005, and this became a regular flow until the Anglesey Aluminium smelter closed in 2009. Ridham Dock in Kent began to receive vanloads of building materials from Germany, while in the North West EWS gained a small-scale flow of chlorodi-fluormethane from Widnes to Germany, later diverted to start from Warrington Dallam.
However, these cross-Channel gains were counterbalanced by numerous small losses. And it wasn’t just a matter of EWS scaling down Enterprise, as by the mid-2000s some countries in mainland Europe were also beginning to run down their wagonload provision. In December 2007, wagonload services via the Tunnel were reduced to two trains a day in each direction, one of them the direct Cologne working introduced in 1998. A third train carried bottled water, but now ran as a full trainload from France to Coventry.
During 2008, the Enterprise network showed definite signs of retreat. At the start of the year the Aberdeen service had already been recast into two trainload workings - a weekly train to Aberdeen Waterloo for calcium carbonate tanks and a twice-weekly train to Laurencekirk for pipes. The pipe traffic was later diverted to the new Raiths Farm freight terminal near Dyce.
The direct Enterprise link between Wembley and Avonmouth was initially reduced in frequency, and then withdrawn in favour of a trip from Newport. The feeders to Bristol East, Widnes and Mostyn were all withdrawn. And at the end of the year Doncaster Belmont yard closed as a marshalling point, with most steel traffic diverted via Rotherham and some flows running direct between Immingham and Warrington.
2009 began with the long-awaited reopening of the Donnington branch, served by a trip working from Warrington. However, the only significant user of Donnington turned out to be the Ministry of Defence, which generated a weekly train for a time.
In Scotland, EWS conveyed its last The Ford plant at Bridgend has usually been served during the night, but in summer 2017 engineering work on the South Wales Main Line caused it to run during daylight hours. A police officer ensures the safe passage of 66148 across Cowbridge Road (Bridgend), as it arrives with the 0955 trip from Bridgend on August 22 2017.
By the end of the year the wagonload network was serving about 25 UK locations, with deliveries ranging from daily to weekly, and that number was steadily shrinking.
consignment of seed potatoes in what turned out to be a very short-lived campaign from Elgin. Other changes included the withdrawal of Enterprise from Bescot yard (which had latterly been the base for trips to Birch Coppice, Burton-on-Trent and Lawley Street), and the loss of feeder services to Warrington Dallam, Quidhampton, Hoo Junction and Queenborough.
In early 2010 DB Schenker (the new name for EWS) made further cutbacks to its wagonload network, which by now had largely jettisoned the Enterprise label.
The biggest change was the end of marshalling at Wembley yard - once the rail freight gateway to and from mainland Europe. Any wagonload traffic for the London area was rerouted via Didcot, which handled a steady throughput of Ministry of Defence traffic. The main driver for this change was the end of single wagonload traffic through the Channel Tunnel, which also brought the demise of trip workings to Ely, Blackburn and Avonmouth.
Elsewhere, Immingham lost its dedicated wagonload service, with any remaining lessthan-trainload traffic from the port conveyed by a steel train to South Wales. In the West Highlands, the transfer of the Fort William alumina from DB Schenker to GB Railfreight left the former with just one regular flow on the route - oil from Grangemouth, which became an occasional block train. By the end of the year the wagonload network was serving about 25 UK locations, with deliveries ranging from daily to weekly, and that number was steadily shrinking.
Between 2011 and 2016, most of the remaining trip workings disappeared one by one. A curious operation that survived until 2011 was lime mortar from Dove Holes to Bletchley, latterly carried by a trip working all the way from Warrington to Bletchley.
In 2012 Teesside lost its wagonload connection, as did the DSM factory at Dalry (once the destination for several flows of chemicals from Cheshire) and the lime works at Dowlow (which sent glassworks lime to Mossend). A bizarre addition to the wagonload network between 2014 and 2016 was gravel from Southampton to Mossend for B&Q, using a small pool of two-axle HEA hoppers.
The final nail in the coffin of wagonload came in May 2017, when the Ministry of Defence reassigned most of its rail business from DB Cargo to GBRf. Military traffic had increasingly formed the backbone of the service, especially on the south-north axis via Didcot, Warrington and Carlisle. Without it, the last remnants of the network would cease to be viable.
Only time will tell whether some way can be found of keeping the last few wagonload flows on rail. Since DB Cargo withdrew its services via Newport in October, the Bridgend-Dagenham automotive traffic has been taken on by Colas Rail and a service from Barry Docks has been trialled by Freightliner, but no solution has yet been found for the imported cars from Portbury. The calcium carbonate from Aberdeen to Irvine and Workington has so far survived in trainload form, while the sodium hydroxide from Runcorn has run but with a reduced frequency.
Sad to say, it is highly unlikely that wagonload freight will ever make a comeback in the UK. The costs of marshalling and trip working are simply prohibitive and, although wagonload is still alive and well in some parts of mainland Europe, we have neither the distances nor the concentrations of traffic on specific routes to make the product competitive.
It is not by chance that no other UK freight operating company has ventured into wagonload. Enterprise was a brave idea, but one that has had its day.
Military traffic had increasingly formed the backbone of the service, especially on the south-north axis via Didcot, Warrington and Carlisle. Without it, the last remnants of the network would cease to be viable.