The yard was used for Land Rovers bound for Italy. Land Rovers produced at Solihull are now sent from Castle Bromwich instead.
Thanks for confirming that my memory was not playing tricks on me.
It does seem to me to be strange that that the Land Rovers have switched to Castle Bromwich.
We dispatch RR Evoques and Discovery Sports from Halewood, Merseyside to Southampton via rail. These are destined for North America and Rest of World (not Europe) markets, with the exception of China where these two models are built in market. Vehicles destined for European markets go by road to mainly Immingham and on to Cuxhaven.
We dispatch Jag XEs, Jag XFs, Jag XJs and Jag F-Types from Castle Bromwich to Southampton via rail. These are destined for North America, China and Rest of World (not Europe) markets. Vehicles destined for European markets go by road to mainly Immingham and on to Cuxhaven.
We dispatch Jag F-PACEs, RR Velar, RR Sport, Range Rovers and LR Discoverys (and formally defenders) from Solihull plant to Immingham and Southampton all by road at a rate of nearly 20 lorries per hour, 24 hours per day, 6 days per week, 49 weeks of the year. Rail doesn't provide the capacity, cost or reliability necessary to support these movements when they'd need to be loaded onto lorries to get to the nearest railhead and the vehicles are too big to double stack on UK gauge rail.
For completeness, we ship Jag E-PACE and Jag I-PACE from Graz, Austria via road back to the UK via Cuxhaven to Immingham shipping primarily. We will also soon begin shipping LR Discoverys from Nitra, Slovakia around the globe (including back to the UK). Nitra is a rail connected facility that will dispatch to sea ports, currently trains through the Channel Tunnel are not planned.
I had tried to find out why, the only answer seems to be the use of Castle Brom railhead (opened 2003) instead. I'd been aware of Jags being loaded there but I've only seen pics from the last few months of Land Rover products on trains from Castle Bromwich.
If you have any pictures I would be interested to see them, I am not aware of any Solihull to Castle Brom lorry moves for onward rail transport and currently no Land Rovers are built at Castle Bromwich, nor have there ever been any.