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3.2.1 Open access and privatization

In August 1991, the UK Secretary of State for Transport announced plans to break the state monopoly of UK domestic rail-freight services that had existed as British Rail since the Transport Act of 1947, by open-ing up the network for use by private freight operators. This was in response to the European Railway Directive (440/91/EEC) (see Chapter 2). The intention, so said the Secretary of State’s announcement, was to do away with red-tape bureaucracy and to invest in a programme to encourage the development of

38 Intermodal developments in the UK

more road–rail combination schemes, principally through hauliers establishing their own freight terminal facilities. However, on a negative note, it has to be recognized that changing from road to road–rail oper-ations is not a simple matter of choice; there are problems in the provision of suitable infrastructures such as terminals, transfer facilities and equipment, and both road and rail vehicles, all of which requires sub-stantial capital investment. Besides this, the former British Rail had neither the versatility to handle all the different types of road vehicle trailer and swap body in common use, nor a rail infrastructure which allowed sufficient gauge clearance to carry road trailers on piggyback-style rail operations. Similarly, most British road hauliers did not, and most still do not, have the specially built trailers needed for piggy-back loading onto rail rolling stock, or suitable swap bodies built to international standards – normal domestic-use demountable bodies are not designed to withstand the stresses imposed by repeated transfer between road and rail transport systems. The Government has said that it expects to see more effort being put into overcoming these limitations and progressive development of intermodal transport for both its economic benefits to users and the environmental benefit to the community as a whole.

The rail privatization plan involved breaking down the British Rail network into a number of separate entities. First and foremost, the rail infrastructure, comprising largely the track, the signalling and the stations, is now managed by Network Rail, which makes track access charges, under contract, to the train operating companies to run their services. These train operators comprise the passenger service network, which was divided into regional companies and sold off, and British Rail’s freight operations, including its trainload businesses, which were sold to the US private rail operator, Wisconsin Central Transportation, and which have subsequently been formed into a new firm, EWS Limited; while Freightliner, the domes-tic container business, was sold to its management and has retained its Freightliner name. The new rail-way freight system works by private companies either owning or hiring fleets of rail wagons (frequently whole block trainloads) to suit their needs which they then contract with the train (locomotive) operator who undertakes the rail haulage operation.

According to the pro-rail body, the Rail-Freight Group (RFG), 1995 proved to be a turning point in the fortunes of UK rail freighting, and it was projecting expansion well into the twenty-first century. In a letter to International Freighting Weekly (IFW) in January 1995, RFG highlighted the contrast between British Rail’s declining freight services under public ownership and the initiatives being taken at that time for privatization, which showed how major freight companies were keenly examining the rail option and running trial operations, often prompted by customers who wished to use, or to be seen to be using, rail as a major constituent of their freighting operations for environmental reasons.

What is important, at least so far as this book is concerned, is that the quite dramatic changes described above have subsequently allowed private companies such as road hauliers and others, either individually or in partnership, to own or hire rail rolling stock and to operate freight services across the rail network, negotiating and paying access charges as appropriate and where necessary obtaining Track Access Grants (TAG) (see page 42) to enable them to do so.

3.2.2 The freight train operators

Rail privatization, as was clearly intended by the then UK Conservative Government, has resulted in the formation of a number of key rail-freight traction companies – the so-called ‘freight train operators’

(FTOs). Principal among these are EWS and Freightliner, both outlined in more detail below, but there are others; namely, Direct Rail Services (DRS) which provides rail haulage, primarily for carrying nuclear materials on behalf of British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL), but also for the private freight sec-tor between the English Midlands and Scotland in association with road haulage and logistics provider WH Malcolm (more of which later); Great Britain (GB) Railfreight, which, it says, aims to provide high-quality flexible bespoke rail-freight logistics solutions; and Advenza Freight, the latest firm to join

the ranks of rail-freight operators, which ran its first ‘FreightBus’ services for palletized goods on the rail network between Willesden (London) and Mossend (Scotland), in October 2004.

3.2.2.1 English, Welsh, and Scottish Railway

Formed on rail privatization in 1996 following its acquisition of the four previous British Rail-freight divisions; namely, Rail Express Systems, Loadhaul, Main Line Freight, and Transrail Freight, EWS became the largest of the UK rail FTO. Now running some 8000 services weekly with nearly 500 loco-motives and over 14 000 freight wagons listed among its rolling stock assets, the company claims to haul over 100 million tonnes of freight every year.

3.2.2.2 Freightliner

Freightliner is the largest intermodal rail operator in the UK, primarily concerned with the movement of deep-sea containers between container ports and inland terminals. It moves around 650 000 containers per year with its fleet of over l00 locomotives and serves 19 terminals. In 2004, a year that was showing booming growth in its intermodal business, Freightliner achieved a record when it moved 2635 contain-ers in a single day. Through its Heavy Haul division, Freightliner is increasingly operating domestic services carrying chemicals, finished automotive products, and coal and rail infrastructure materials.

3.2.3 Piggyback developments

Another major intermodal initiative in the UK was undertaken by the aptly named Piggyback Consortium.

This grouping of interests from the public and private sectors (including such bodies as local authorities, transport trade associations, port authorities, Railtrack and Eurotunnel, and a number of private com-panies) was formed in 1993 to study the potential for piggyback services between the UK and the Continent, and to determine whether a commercially viable network could be established between key markets in GB and the Continent after meeting the cost of engineering works. It made a detailed study, which was part funded by the European Commission Transport Directorate (DGVII) under the Pilot Actions on Combined Transport (PACT) programme (see Chapter 11), and a report was published in April 1994.

It should be explained here that piggyback operation is just one form of intermodal combined road–rail transport. In this case it is the carriage of 4-metre high, road-going articulated semi-trailers on special rail wagons, principally designed to provide a low travel height to ensure loading-gauge clear-ance through existing rail bridges and tunnels. The Consortium saw this as an important segment of the freight market, which had received scant attention in the UK despite the fact that, at that time, three-quarters of unit-load traffic between GB and the Continent was carried in semi-trailers via the roll-on/

roll-off (RO/RO) cross-Channel ferries. Initial analysis of the potential UK market for intermodal ser-vices carried out for the Consortium suggested that as many as 400 000 unit movements per year could be captured by rail by the year 2003 – that would have meant between 20 and 40 full trains per day.

However, there were shortcomings to this as the Consortium was well aware, not least because of the physical structure of Britain’s rail network. Its restricted loading gauge (lower and narrower bridges and tunnels, and station platforms being closer to the track) meant that the operation of piggyback in the UK, as practised in Europe, would not be feasible without a very substantial investment in rail network restruc-turing to increase gauge clearance by at least 160 millimetres to allow the passage of 4-metre-high semi-trailers on low-built (i.e. piggyback) rail wagons. For example, a projected investment of around £70 million would have been needed at that time to provide adequate gauge clearance on the Ireland – Scotland – Continent via the Channel Tunnel route. It is worth noting that this multi-million pound estimate escalated

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alarmingly as the years passed, in fact until the Piggyback Consortium finally gave up on the project and alternative solutions were beginning to be developed (see Chapter 7).

Before the loading-gauge saga was fully played out, another obstacle reared its head. This was the fact that the UK’s standard road-going semi-trailer fleet was not, and indeed is still not, generally suit-able for two reasons: first, most semi-trailers are not constructed to withstand the stresses of lifting under load for loading/unloading from piggyback rail wagons; and second, they do not have the built-in lifting pockets necessary to engage the crane’s lifting arms. Most standard UK semi-trailers are also built to at least 4.2-metre-high (rather than to the European 4-metre limitation on maximum height), which adds further complication to the piggyback scenario. Yet another shortcoming at that time (i.e. the early 1990s) was that UK law did not permit vehicles used in either piggyback or rolling motorway services through the Channel Tunnel to operate at the 44-tonne gross weight necessary to provide efficient and economical intermodal operations. They were restricted to the then current standard UK maximum gross weight limit for articulated vehicles of only 38 tonnes. (Figure 3.1 shows a typical piggyback semi-trailer

Fig. 3.1 Typical piggyback tank trailer being unloaded by overhead gantry crane. (Source: Interferry.)

showing how the grapple arms of the overhead crane match with the sockets in the trailer sides and giv-ing an indication of the stresses imposed when liftgiv-ing loaded units.)

In response to the Consortium’s April 1994 report, in which it called for the development of prototype piggyback wagons, an October 1995 update brochure indicated that four separate manufacturing groups were working on such wagons. These were anticipated to be in ‘revenue’ service in 1996 carrying low-height semi-trailers within GB and through the Channel Tunnel, and full-low-height semi-trailers onto the Continent where the higher loading gauge required is already available.

By 2004 the original enthusiasm for piggybacking semi-trailers on rail had largely dissipated for rea-sons of gauge limitation as described above and also for economic rearea-sons. There is no doubt that despite the superficially heartening impression given by seeing a trainload of semi-trailers that, ‘here’s another load of heavy vehicles removed from our motorways’, it is a fact that lifting, loading, and carrying semi-trailers on rail is an extremely high-cost operation on many scores. First, the fact that the wheels and sus-pension forming the semi-trailer running gear adds considerable weight, which limits payload capacity within road vehicle maximum legal weights, and also produces stability problems. Second, the add-itional capital costs involved in building both the special low-height rail wagons and the extra strong road semi-trailers needed for piggyback operations. Third, the capital cost of the special lifting equipment needed, and its operating costs. And fourth, and not least, the demurrage costs of expensive semi-trailers that are out of circulation while on long-haul train journeys.

Some successful piggyback operations, nevertheless, do still exist. This is particularly so, it seems, where a physical barrier exists such as the Channel Tunnel, where the Eurotunnel freight shuttles provide an economical rolling motorway-type operation for complete road vehicles with drivers, and similarly on trans-Alpine routes such as those through Austria and Switzerland where local environmental legislation sets severe limitations on the passage of heavy road vehicles on transit journeys. There are other instances, too, where piggyback can be successful; for example, in the Blue Circle/Lafarge cement oper-ation described below, which is very specific in that positive outside factors overrule the negativity aspects of basically ‘carrying wheels’. Apart from these relatively isolated examples, the current trend is very much towards the use of ISO containers – commonly referred to as ‘boxes’ – and intermodal swap bodies with predominance being given to the former because of their stackability. In fact, in most world markets outside of Europe, the standard ISO shipping container reigns supreme, principally because of relative cheapness, its inherent strength and durability to withstand many handlings, and particularly because of its capabilities in regard to top lifting and stackability, neither of which apply to the conven-tional swap body.

3.2.4 The central railway project

An ambitious £10 billion project to develop a dedicated ‘lorries on trains’ freight railway, linking the Northwest of England with mainland Europe via the Channel Tunnel, which was destined to remove sig-nificant numbers of heavy goods vehicles from UK motorways, appears to have finally hit the buffers in 2004. This was when the UK Government decided against supporting the necessary Parliamentary Bill because of potential risk to the public purse should private financing arrangements fall short. A substan-tial case had been put forward by Central Trains plc, the Franco-British Consortium leading the project, for a 420-mile long railway running between Liverpool and Lille in Northern France, and mainly using underused and disused railways along existing transport corridors. The scheme was claimed to have been based on a proven, commercially viable, US model and designed to carry some 3 million heavy lorry trailers a year. Certainly, from the environmentalists’ point of view, this was a very laudable proposal, but without the surety of vast amounts of private finance and the consequent likelihood that Government aid would be required to help defray the massive costs projected, it was, disappointingly, an almost inevitable non-starter.

42 Intermodal developments in the UK 3.2.5 Gauge enhancement

An essential aspect of the development of intermodal freight services, and particularly piggyback sys-tems, on Britain’s rail network – as we have seen above – has been the limitation imposed on such oper-ations by the restricted rail gauge clearance on the network. While this issue is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 7, it is useful here, in this review of intermodal developments, to mention the fact that over recent years gauge restrictions on, for example, the West Coast Main Line (WCML) have inhibited attempts at running north-to-south piggyback trains and vice versa, and restricted the routes on which the latest generation of 9-foot 6-inch-high, so-called ‘tall’, maritime containers can be carried.

At the time of completing this book, significant steps are being taken to develop clear routes for such traffic, with one in three containers currently passing through UK ports being 9-foot 6-inch-tall and the prospect, according to the SRA, that by 2010 this number will rise to one in two containers. In fact, as recently as November 2004, the completion of major engineering work on a rail tunnel at Ipswich has allowed the first services for 9-foot 6-inch containers carried on standard rail wagons to operate from the Port of Felixstowe to the Midlands, Northwest, and Scotland. At the same time the key rail corridor between Nuneaton and Birmingham has also been opened up for this traffic. Earlier in 2004, a vital ‘tall container’ link between the port of Tilbury (London) and the WCML had also been opened up meaning that virtually half of all the containers that currently land at Tilbury can be transported by rail to the Midlands and the north of England.

In November 2004, the SRA published a consultation document on gauging policy in which it was seeking public views (by 18 March 2005) on what its gauge policy should be for the future, with the objective of setting a target gauge configuration for the whole network. While the consultation covered many relevant issues, freight traffic obviously featured largely, in particular because of the increasing trend towards taller and wider containers as mentioned above.