Rail freight volumes are rising, but much more needs to be done to achieve a genuine rail freight revolution
A quiet revolution has been taking place in the distribution market, with shippers continuing to increase their use of intermodal services provided by the freight operating companies.
Port investment has taken place to provide greater rail loading capacity and it is a similar story with inland distribution centres, where both new and previously available facilities have enhanced handling facilities to cater for a greater volume of traffic.
This is a response to changing market conditions, as more containers are delivered to distribution centres rather than end users, in part as a result of retail customers moving from the high street to online shopping.
Rail freight statistics are collated by the Office of Rail and Road and published on a quarterly basis. The calculation that best reflects traffic activity is the use of the net tonne kilometres metric which combines tonnes conveyed and the distance covered by the haul. It is well suited to intermodal flows, which cover long distances conveying containers that have a lower weight density than bulk commodities.
According to the ORR, in the 2021/22 financial year that ended in March, 16.87 billion net tonne kilometres (ntk) was hauled, which represented a rise of 11.3% over the previous year when the pandemic caused reduced demand and, more importantly, is 1.8% above the pre-pandemic figure recorded two years ago.
Although intermodal was the largest contributor, accounting for 38.5% of the total, the volume of 6.50 billion ntk was slightly reduced, with a decline of 3.8% compared with the pre-pandemic figures. This is a reflection of continuing supply chain disruption as a result of port congestion leading to a shortage of containers for loading in the Far East.
The overall growth in traffic reflected the demand for construction materials, where an increase of 10.6% took place compared with two years ago, with 5.13 billion ntk hauled, which represented 30.4% of network activity.
Other significant commodities were metals, oil and petroleum, and biomass and there has also been an upsurge in the movement of coal to the three remaining electricity generating plants that have been held in reserve at West Burton, Ratcliffe-on-Soar and the boilers at Drax that have not been converted to burn biomass.
The freight operators have a performance regime that is based on identifying services that are more than 15 minutes late of their scheduled terminal arrival time. Last year 93.6% of services achieved this benchmark, which was a decline from the figure of 95.2% recorded in the previous year, which the ORR judged to be due to a lower impact from passenger services during the pandemic.
INTERNATIONAL FREIGHT DOWN
One of the conundrums of the rail freight market is the failure to exploit Channel Tunnel capacity. In the last year international movements accounted for less than 2% of total rail freight activity and traffic carried declined by 34.1% compared with two years ago. The reduction is due to the cessation of a significant flow of steel traffic from Scunthorpe as a result of industry changes.
Although a number of efforts have been made to revitalise the use of the Channel Tunnel no great success has resulted, including the past initiative by Eurotunnel to operate its own services with the creation of the Europorte business that purchased GB Railfreight in 2010, which was subsequently sold to a private equity firm in 2016.
Prior to the opening of the tunnel in 1994 a train ferry service had been operated on routes from Harwich and Dover and BR maintained a substantial organisation that negotiated tariffs with continental railway administrations and maintained sales offices in the larger European countries.
After the sale of BR’s Railfreight business, EWS Railway became responsible for marketing international traffic, with the cost of using the Channel Tunnel initially subsidised by the Government. It’s easy to be wise after the event, but once the train ferry services were withdrawn expertise in tariff negotiation was lost as it was outsourced to a number of freight forwarders who proved to be unsuccessful in generating the traffic that had been forecast.
It has to be acknowledged that train ferry operations lost money. The structure of the offer was that BR provided the ships and the continental railway organisations provided the bulk of the wagons. The operation depended on the use of wagon load services and although new high-capacity wagons were introduced for use on Speedlink services it was evident that these services were increasingly uneconomic. An attempt was made in 1968 to provide a Freightliner service between London Stratford and Paris with wagons conveyed on train ferry ships but there proved to be insufficient demand.
STRATEGIC INVESTMENT
The growth in the intermodal market reflects investment by Network Rail in the Strategic Freight Network (SFN) which has increased the number of routes where gauge clearance has taken place to convey 9ft 6in high containers on platform wagons rather than the use of inefficient pocket or, as they were once described, well wagons. The work to provide the necessary
W10 gauge clearance includes the wider W12 profile that allows swap bodies to be conveyed, as well as ISO standard containers.
There has also been work to allow longer train lengths to be operated with the aim of hauling services made of
120 SLU (single length unit).
An SLU dates back to the length of a single Vanfit which had a 10ft wheelbase and could carry up to 12 tons. Later the permanently coupled five-wagon Freightliner sets were counted as 15 SLU, with most routes restricted to 60 SLU, or 20-wagon sets conveying 60 TEU (20ft equivalent containers).
The ability to run longer trains requires extended loops and refuge sidings, as well as signalling alterations to allow track circuits to be cleared.
For container trains it has been found that the load can be hauled by a single modern-era locomotive, typically a
Class 66.
There are gaps in the SFN, which is focused on the services operating from the three largest container handling ports at Felixstowe, London Gateway and Southampton. No immediate proposal has been made to provide improved gauge clearance of transPennine routes, which is restricting growth at Liverpool, where a second container terminal has been opened and rail access improved, with double track now in place on the Bootle branch.
This follows the reinstatement of the Olive Mount chord at Edge Hill junction which was brought into traffic in December 2008, enabling capacity to be doubled for services requiring access to the West Coast Main Line.
INCREASED HAULAGE CAPABILITY
The need for an increased loading gauge is not relevant for bulk traffics, but the haulage capability of modern traction does mean that longer trains can be operated, which enables unit costs to be reduced. This has allowed high-capacity quarries to compete with locally sourced aggregate suppliers which has been reflected by Network Rail.
This caused the closure of longestablished sources of extraction such as at Meldon Quarry in Devon, where relatively small output meant it was no longer economic when compared with longer distance haulage using high-capacity trains to NR distribution centres, which included Westbury.
A similar situation occurred at Penmaenmawr located on the North Wales coastal line, although in this case the rail terminal has recently reopened to supply commercial needs in the North West.
The high demand for construction materials last year has resulted in rail volume reaching an all-time high in the sector and as in the distribution market new loading facilities and terminals have opened.
FOC MARKET SHARE
After privatisation, Railtrack wanted to move away from dependence on the EWS Railway for conveying materials needed for infrastructure renewals and awarded a contract to GB Railfreight to haul ballast trains. This allowed an initial order to be placed for seven Class 66 locomotives and this fleet has subsequently been hugely expanded. With acquisitions of the type previously used in Europe GBRf has recently secured its 100th example of the class.
It is close to displacing DB Cargo (the successor to the EWS Railway) as the largest freight operating company in Britain as traffic growth of 29.2% has taken place over the last two years to reach 2.14 billion ntk, representing 24.2% of the market. Meanwhile DB Cargo saw a 2.9% decline in volume, hauling 2.83 billion ntk which was 33.9% of the total.
GBRf has secured the contract to supply materials for the construction of HS2, which makes it likely it will overtake the level of traffic conveyed by DB Cargo, given the scale of movements the new line will require. Direct Rail Services has also seen significant growth over the last two years, increasing its activity by 26.8% to reach 0.69 billion ntk (7.7% of the market); it is also a significant provider of traction to third parties, with 35 Class 68 bi-mode locomotives in service.
NATIONAL FREIGHT NETWORK
In a new initiative the Government has published a policy document that suggests setting up a National Freight Network. The plan is to consider rail and road network investment as a whole, as for both modes there are capacity issues where priorities are needed.
The good news is that this does not reflect any priority for motorway and trunk road investment at the expense of the rail network and the green credentials of using rail rather than road are emphasised.
There are no specific proposals, but benefits for rail are likely to include a more favourable planning environment for rail-connected distribution depots and a pull-back from road investment where the rail network either provides or has the potential to offer parallel capacity.