furnessvale
Established Member
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- 14 Jul 2015
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- 4,575
Excellent news but the concept is not new, nor unique.An instagram post in relation to todays Humberstone Road job by David Fletcher, Cappagh Director of Rail
"'Pop Up Rail Freight'. Today Cappagh company DCRail delivered the first train to a new rail freight facility in Leicester, the first goods to be delivered by rail to the East Midlands city for a number of decades. The simplicity of the operation is its strength. There are no expensive connections, sidings or concrete pads. Unloading is undertaken by just lifting the load over the boundary fence from wagons in the adjacent siding. With such a simple operation it took less than two months from the initial meeting to delivery of the first train. Easy access to the network allows more freight to be moved by train and the proactive support of the local Network Rail team was the key to the early and safe start of this operation. Hopefully plenty more similar operations can be established in the future. A great team effort"
If this sort of operation can be regularly duplicated by all the FOCs then things could be evened up a little between road and rail hauliers
A few years ago Redland had their aggregates trains with built in conveyors and discharge conveyor to unload "over the fence" if needed. Are any still running?
More recently, sand for Ravenhead glass at St Helens has been unloaded by grab reaching over the lineside wall into the train.
Perhaps time to revive the Blatchford container unloading crane? This looked like an overgrown twin mast tracklayer that could travel with a container train, or start a new service from any site with two parallel sidings and road access.