The United Kingdom is very much divided over rail freight operations and ambitions. The need to encourage modal shift is widely recognised, but differing demands call for a different approach in each of the four nations.
With only around 10% of all goods moved by rail in the UK, there is certainly scope for modal shift. Britain lags behind several European countries for share, but there are government-mandated plans to close the gap between rail and road.
The UK government agency charged with managing the infrastructure across Great Britain, Network Rail, is eager to play its part in growing the cargo volume on Britain’s railways. That government target is to increase rail freight by 75% by 2050. That relatively modest ambition does come from a period of overall stagnation. Some would say more kindly that it’s more of a triumph of stability in the face of decades of decline.
Traditional loads replaced
The overall volume of freight moved and the number of trains dispatched have both remained broadly stable over the past decade. Finding growth has been another matter. Traditional loads have disappeared at the same time as the economy of Britain has shifted from an industrial base to services. Rail freight has been running to stand still, as it were, for decades.
Put that down to the eradication of coal traffic – the very reason the modern railway was invented, two hundred years ago. It is only recently, in the last two decades, that coal has disappeared from rail operations, in parallel with a rapid decline in heavy industry and a policy of decarbonisation in the economy at large. That has, however, been mitigated by a rapid rise in two other sectors, namely aggregates and intermodal.
Rise of aggregates and containers
Guy Bates, Head of Freight Development at Network Rail, has seen the shift first hand. He explained that the geology and geography of Britain have played into the hands of rail freight.
The raw materials for the construction industry are found in quarries, mainly in the northwest and south of Britain. The boom in construction is centred in the southeast and London. Trains that previously ran from collieries and latterly from coal importing ports like Immingham now run with modified rolling stock from quarries in Derbyshire and Somerset. They replace the massive tonnages moved from coal ports like Immingham, for example, which saw up to forty trains a day dispatched to serve coal-fired power stations. That level of traffic is unlikely to be matched – although Immingham remains the UK’s largest port by weight of cargo moved and still sends twelve trains a day to Drax power station, albeit carrying wood pellets these days.
Even that quintessential bulk handling port of Immingham is embracing the rise of intermodal traffic. As has been reported previously in WorldCargo News (June 2024), the moving of containers has risen above every other commodity carried by rail, except aggregates. The two commodities compete for the top spot in most metrics.
Boxes may well win, unless someone emulates DP World’s innovation at Southampton for another cargo type. There, the terminal operator is offering a financial incentive to shippers who choose rail over road to move their containers inland. It’s been a big hit, and the company is on target to move 40% of import containers by rail. Already, the initiative has taken 100,000 containers off the roads in just over a year.
Encouraging new entrants
At a recent workshop aimed at new entrants to the UK rail freight market, the extent of intermodal traffic in the UK was revealed. Some six million containers are landed at UK ports annually, said Steve Freeman of RailX, a company that specialises in finding space for containers on intermodal trains. At “Demystifying Rail Freight”, he expanded on how, despite the existence of significant traffic opportunities, little has changed. “Rail share of the UK freight market has barely changed in 30 years,” he said. “Whilst it is true that commodity share has changed, overall share has remained largely static.”
The issue has been the difficulty in attracting new entrants, explained Steve Freeman. “A significant proportion of the freight forwarding and third-party logistics market claim that they find gaining access to rail difficult – particularly for smaller volumes,” he said.
However, Freeman was also able to quote examples of small customers successfully engaging with the modern equivalent of ‘wagon load’ volumes. “The industry has broadly replaced trainload coal with trainload container services,” he said. “The key to increasing our share of the market lies in providing better accessibility, and competitive and innovative pricing mechanisms.”
Rail freight operating companies, notably GB Railfreight and Freightliner, have aggressive growth plans in the intermodal sector. However, bridging the gap between a profitable load for a road carrier and a viable load for rail freight may be the big issue. Making it attractive for medium-sized businesses to embrace rail freight may be the way to reach that government growth target.
Express logistics
Retail parcels traffic has been surrendered almost entirely since the 1990s. However, under the more modern guise of express logistics, several niche operators have been revisiting the sector. InterCity RailFreight, for example, carry premium packages on existing passenger services. Another start-up, Varamis Rail, has repurposed redundant passenger trains and offers its own scheduled parcels services.
However, as recently reported in our online news service, the biggest parcel generator of all has taken the step of wholesale shift to rail. Amazon announced in January that, alongside a large order for electric road trucks, it would be switching trunk distribution between its hubs in the English Midlands and Scotland to dedicated intermodal rail. That’s a big step for Amazon. It puts all its delivery eggs in one basket – albeit a very fast and electric-powered one. Nonetheless, rail delays are less prevalent than highway delays and are often more predictable. Amazon, above all, would not take this step if it didn’t make commercial sense, and their move into the market may be all the incentive needed for others to follow.
Modern infrastructure
Network Rail says that, despite the low percentage of traffic that chooses rail, 78mt of freight was carried on Britain’s railways (in 2022). “Unlike many sectors that are concentrated in the southeast of the country,” says Network Rail, “rail freight brings significant value for areas in the north of England, Scotland and Wales – where the railway has some of its busiest sections and is home to the headquarters of many freight operators.”
A notable example of that geographical diversity, and a win for the rail freight industry, has been the celebrated success of Highland Spring, the premium mineral water bottler. Their production plant in the Scottish village of Blackford was successfully connected to the rail network amid much fanfare, not least for taking around seventy trucks off the village high street every week.
Historically, a “company siding” was a common sight. It’s unlikely that, in post-industrial Britain, such infrastructure will be needed again. However, the increasing popularity of rail-connected logistics parks, with their own purpose-built rail freight hubs, have made the trunk movement of goods by rail an altogether more attractive proposition. One that not just Highland Spring can toast, either.
The Irish Question
Crossing the Irish Sea requires a recalibration of rail freight expectations. There is no fixed link between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland. Goods travel by several ferry routes. All that commerce is either direct maritime or road transport ferries. Despite rail freight capability in relevant ports in all five nations, no rolling stock makes the crossing. That’s not least because the 1600mm “Irish gauge” is not compatible with the 1435mm “standard gauge” adopted in Great Britain and most of Europe.
In a UK anomaly, rail freight in Northern Ireland is merely a memory. The last trains carrying any cargo ceased in the late 1990s. Most recently, the intermodal and general goods terminal at Adelaide in the south of central Belfast saw two-way traffic between there and hubs in the Republic of Ireland. However, the yard has since been repurposed. In part, it is a ubiquitous light industrial estate, hemmed in by the adjacent Windsor Park football stadium. The remainder is now a rolling stock and maintenance depot for the province-wide Translink passenger network.
Over the border, Ireland never abandoned rail freight. While consists are commensurate with the thinner population, when compared with Great Britain, there are daily flows across all the Irish provinces.
Northern Ireland does figure in a wide-ranging and ambitious vision for the future. Governments in Belfast and Dublin have collaborated in drafting “The All-Island Strategic Rail Review Report”. That document sets out more than thirty strategic recommendations to enhance the rail system in Ireland and Northern Ireland up to 2050, aligning with net carbon zero commitments in both jurisdictions.
Separately, the independent rail freight arm of Iarnród Éireann (Irish Rail) has presented its own report, “Rail Freight 2040 Strategy”. That plan calls for a very ambitious five-fold increase in the number of rail freight services, to include over 100 new weekly services across the rail network. That compares with the 75% increase by 2050 called for by the UK government. However, with around 650 freight trains scheduled each day across England, Scotland and Wales, the overall number of services is much larger in Great Britain.
The Irish plans would integrate freight services into a less intensive passenger network. Only Dublin has a metro-style service, and much of the rest of Ireland is served by single-track routes – some of which are slated for doubling or the provision of improved passing loop opportunities. Some reinstatements are planned with freight in mind. Notably, the reconnection of the west coast town of Foynes (25km from Limerick), currently underway, is expected to commence for freight in 2026, with passenger services at a later date.
This article first appeared in the March print issue of WorldCargo News