GB Railfreight is making good on its promise to introduce a raft of new services and expand its operations. The company inaugurated a new Southampton Docks to Birmingham Hams Hall intermodal service today, Monday, 8 April, operating daily from the south coast port. The service falls within the distance limit to qualify for the DP World modal shift discount scheme, which encourages end users to opt for rail transport.
Improved facilities at Southampton and a cash incentive to switch from road to rail have both contributed to GBRf’s decision to add a new service to its intermodal roster. The service vindicates the financing scheme introduced by port owners DP World. The distance between the port and the terminal falls just within the 140-mile limit (224km) set by the port owners. It’s almost as if this haul was in mind from the outset.
Short-haul intermodal is a tough financial task
GB Railfreight has already pledged to operate eighty intermodal trains daily by 2025. It’s a central part of the company’s expansion plans. The haulier made the pledge at the opening of their new maintenance facilities at Peterborough back in October last year. The stimulus of DP World’s modal shift subsidy has helped move them a diagram closer to that target.
GBRf began moving intermodal boxes from the port in 2017, in a contract with Solent Stevedores. Since then, the relationship has grown, and GBRf has become a daily visitor to Southampton. However, relatively short-distance intermodal haulage by rail has proved difficult to make profitable for rail freight companies. Recently the market has begun to open up, driven by environmental concerns. There is a growing lobby from within the rail freight industry to encourage governments in the UK to help make this a part of the decarbonisation plans of the parliaments in London, Edinburgh and Cardiff.
Birmingham with connections to Glasgow
A recent demonstration of a short-haul intermodal service was carried out between Grangemouth and Elderslie in Scotland. That 50-mile (80km) haul was witnessed by the Scottish transport secretary and proved that the train could beat the traffic across a heavily congested part of Scotland’s road network. The same is the theory behind the new GBRf service, which will bring containers from the docks to the inland terminal at Birmingham for onward ‘last mile’ delivery.
There will also be a connection available to move containers up the West Coast to Mossend near Glasgow. By scheduling the service as a connection rather than a through train, customers will not be in breach of the terms of the subsidy on offer. That said, GBRf is openly promoting the service as a connection with the ‘last mile’ available at both Hams Hall and Mossend.
