Analysis
Is intermodal traffic about to enter a golden age? With two new terminals up and running and others in the pipeline, the signs are good. PAUL SHANNON takes a look at recent developments
Freight‘s new gateways.
DESPITE the inevitable challenges, intermodal traffic in the UK is currently well. Positive messages on rail freight from Network Rail and the Government are certainly helping to fuel growth, as is the desire by some companies to reduce emissions in their transport strategy.
Regional distribution terminals play a key part in the intermodal business and it’s in this area that we are beginning to see something of a breakthrough.
In recent decades we have grown tired of reading predictions of ‘16 trains a day’ or similar in the blurb for new terminals that have gone on to see little or no rail throughput. But two of the latest additions to the network - Doncaster iPort and East Midlands Gateway - have shown what rail freight can achieve when the conditions are right.
Location and layout are crucial to the success of an intermodal terminal.
The location needs to offer a long enough haul from the southern ports - Felixstowe, Southampton and London
Gateway - to make rail viable.
At the same time it’s good if the distance is short enough to permit out-and-back working within 24 hours, allowing a daily service to be covered by a single set of resources. Broadly speaking, a swathe of the country from the West Midlands to South Yorkshire meets these criteria.
A terminal’s location also needs to offer good access - both rail and for HGVs - and a suitable neighbourhood.
The rail access should ideally avoid the need for time-consuming reversals, and movements in and out of the terminal shouldn’t be constrained by a lack of paths.
The HGV access should avoid the use of minor or heavily congested roads.
And the neighbourhood should be conducive to round-the-clock operation - ideally well away from sensitive residential areas. Local residents may generally be supportive of moving freight from road to rail, but not if it means a noisy operation on their doorstep.
Key aspects of layout include siding length and storage space.
These days, terminals need to be able to handle 775-metre trains without shunting, as this is now the target length for intermodal trains in the UK.
Only recently, NR authorised 775-metre trains on several routes - from Southampton to Birmingham, Manchester and
Leeds, and between Daventry and Grangemouth. Storage space needs to be laid out in such a way that internal movement vehicles (IMVs) can manoeuvre containers smoothly around the site and stack them no more than three boxes high.
Another factor that makes a good intermodal terminal is adjacent warehousing. If the warehousing is located on site, containers can be collected and delivered by the terminal’s IMVs or the customer’s specialist vehicles instead of HGVs, reducing costs significantly.
Terminal contrasts
Doncaster iPort scores pretty highly against the above criteria. The rail part of the development comprises three straight sidings capable of taking 775-metre trains - one for loading and unloading, one for stabling and one for running round.
The site is post-industrial in nature and has excellent road access via the M18 and A1(M). When complete, some six million square feet of logistics space will be reachable without using public roads, including 1.2 million sq ft already occupied by Amazon.
In railway terms, iPort lies near the north end of the South Yorkshire Joint line to Worksop, which now carries no regular through freight traffic. This means there is no restriction on paths for entry and exit.
However, trains between iPort and Felixstowe have to run round at Hexthorpe, just outside Doncaster, incurring a time and cost penalty.
In theory this problem could be overcome by sending the trains via the Worksop line, but the loading gauge on that route is far too restrictive for deep-sea containers. Maybe, at some point, suitable gauge enhancement will be carried out. In the short term NR could well mothball the line given its lack of traffic.
The success of iPort makes a striking contrast with other intermodal terminals in the region.
It currently handles three GBRf-worked trains a day to and from Felixstowe, one to/from Southampton, up to two to/from Teesport (currently running at a reduced frequency), plus a daily DRS-operated train from Daventry to iport and on to Teesport.
Less than two miles away is Doncaster Railport, the former Channel Tunnel terminal which handled European boxes only briefly before becoming a deep-sea railhead.
The current throughput at Railport is just three trains a day, all to and from Felixstowe. Although Railport is well connected to the East Coast Main Line and the Joint line via Gainsborough, its road access is poor compared with iPort and the site itself is constrained in
size and layout.
A little further away, the Newell & Wright terminal at Rotherham handles up to four intermodal trains a day, but lacks the on-site warehousing and storage space on offer at iPort.
East Midlands Gateway (EMG) is the second intermodal success story of recent times, and it has much in common with Doncaster iPort.
Opened as recently as February 2020, the rail part of EMG comprises three parallel tracks with 775m capacity, with plenty of space for container storage and access to on-site warehousing including for household names such as Amazon and Nestlé. EMG enjoys excellent road connectivity, with the M1 motorway and several major trunk roads virtually converging on the site.
In railway terms, EMG is reached by a two-mile branch from the freight-only Castle Donington line, with the main line junction facing west. This means that trains to/ from the east have to run round somewhere, either nearby at Castle Donington or elsewhere on the network.
This has not prevented a rapid build-up of rail traffic. At the time of writing EMG is served daily by a DB train to and from Felixstowe, a Freightliner service to/from Felixstowe, a GBRf train to/from Southampton and a GBRf train to/ from Liverpool Seaforth.
The last service came as something of a surprise, given how Seaforth has struggled to maintain volumes on its twice-weekly train to Mossend.
It is perhaps a sore point that those Felixstowe-EMG trains that run round at Castle Donington do so in sidings provided about a decade ago for a large Marks & Spencer distribution centre. Use of that facility has so far shunned the railway completely.
The only other intermodal terminal in the East Midlands region was the first-generation Freightliner facility at Beeston, near Nottingham.
This closed as long ago as 1987, at a time when Freightliner was slimming down its network and focusing on core routes to and from deep-sea ports. The Beeston site would be far too small to support an intermodal terminal today.
Daventry, Cannock, Mossend
While Doncaster iPort and EMG have rightly taken the limelight, there has been growth elsewhere that augurs well for the future of intermodal freight.
The well-established Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT) - really located at Crick, about eight miles north of
Daventry - keeps its status as the busiest inland intermodal terminal in the UK. At the time of writing DIRFT has nine arrivals and departures on a typical weekday.
The Channel Tunnel intermodal business for which DIRFT was built in 1997 is now a distant memory - apart from a single flow of aluminium from Germany - but the terminal has found an important niche in the domestic distribution market.
The well-publicised DRS-worked
Tesco train from Daventry to Mossend is actually just one of five daily services on the DaventryScotland axis. The other departures from Daventry serve Wentloog, Doncaster/Teesport, Ripple Lane/ Purfleet and Tilbury.
Interestingly the deep-sea ports are absent from the list - the resources are better deployed on longer transits.
As with iPort and EMG, DIRFT enjoys good road access - it’s just a stone’s throw from the M1 - and its location alongside the Northampton loop of the West Coast Main Line is good for rail connectivity, even though paths at certain times of day are scarce.
DIRFT also has plenty of warehousing within the site and nearby. Building work is currently under way for DIRFT III, adding further sidings with the potential for extra intermodal traffic.
Several other intermodal projects are waiting in the wings.
A long-mooted terminal at Cannock may replace the existing city-centre Freightliner hub at Birmingham Lawley Street.
One of two possible terminals near Northampton may come to fruition despite the proximity of DIRFT.
And in Scotland, Mossend International Railfreight Park will bring Scottish rail freight into the 21st century with eight 775-metre sidings and storage for 5,000 containers.
Yet we finish this review with a note of caution. Not all intermodal terminals succeed.
Telford International Rail Freight Park failed to attract regular intermodal traffic and today the facility is used mainly to maintain automotive wagons.
The intermodal terminal for Bristol has closed, partly because the abolition of Severn Crossing tolls made it cost-effective to serve Bristol by road from Wentloog.
And the promising plans for a terminal at Parkside on the WCML appear to have been abandoned.
Interesting times lie ahead, but only the best schemes will thrive.
“The rail access should ideally avoid the need for time-consuming reversals, and movements in and out of the terminal shouldn’t be constrained by a lack of paths.”