80sFreightliner lengths v Modern liners/intermodal

[MarkWi72]

I may have seen a thread about this before, but could not find it. Some modern intermodal /liners are 24-30 wagons in length. When chatting to a guy a few years ago at Acton Bridge, he reckoned some Coatbridge -Daventry Tescos are 40 wagon lengths. I saw a Wentloog - Daventry last week at Smethwick Rolfe Street that looked 30 plus in length. Took almost a minute to go past. I was in the car at the time, not on the station.

The older freight liners could be 15-20 I think? I recall sone quite short ones too and have seen them with around 6-10 on some old YouTube clips. What was the longest freightliner/intermodal in the 70s to early 90s? I guess generally shorter as there were also class6 Speedlink/Railfreight which took the strain too? With Cargowaggon loads. More powerful traction also counts.

Anyone around from the railways who can confirm what they were blocked as?

 

[Adrian Barr]

I've just been leafing through an OPC book "Life and Times: Freightliner" by Michael J. Collins from 1991: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Freightliners-Life-Times-Michael-Collins/dp/0860934551/

It mentions that Freightliner tried to run as many services with 20 wagons as possible, which makes that sound like a fairly standard train length by the end of the 1980s.

The 1980s era Freightliner wagons (FFAs / FGAs) ran in sets of 5, and the book mentions lengths ranging from 5 to 25 wagons depending on the service, but I agree 15 or 20 would have been a typical length. Like you say, trawling through YouTube videos is probably the best way of checking.

In terms of current operations, there's a regular 4S48 19:15 Daventry - Mossend (hauled by a Freightliner 66) which conveys traffic for both Mossend and Grangemouth and can run with 20 IKA twin wagons (megafrets), or 40 "platforms," making it almost half a mile long (nearly 2500 feet, around 750 metres). This limits the places it can be looped, and requires a path with sufficient time for a diesel to climb Shap and Beattock without delaying trains behind it, so only certain trains can run at that kind of length.

Looking at a couple of Wentloog trains from November, 4M36 from Daventry had 17 IKA twins (34 platforms), making it another long one, while 4V30 from London Gateway had 34 wagons, another one getting close to 750 metres which is probably the maximum for any regular services. A common length for present day trains to Southampton and Felixstowe would be in the region of 100 "SLU" (standard length units based on traditional 21ft wagons) which is 2100 feet / 640 meters.

 

[Springs Branch]

It mentions that Freightliner tried to run as many services with 20 wagons as possible, which makes that sound like a fairly standard train length by the end of the 1980s.

The 1980s era Freightliner wagons (FFAs / FGAs) ran in sets of 5, and the book mentions lengths ranging from 5 to 25 wagons depending on the service, but I agree 15 or 20 would have been a typical length. Like you say, trawling through YouTube videos is probably the best way of checking.

The attached scans are from a 1979-80 Working Timetable, showing overnight Freightliner arrivals and departures at Trafford Park Terminal.

Each column referring to a Freightliner service has a SLU = Standard Length Units note for that particular train.


These seem to show trains timetabled with either 16, 32 or (most commonly) 64 SLU lengths.

I assume that 4H57 Garston Speke Sdgs to Trafford Park and 4H50 Crewe to Trafford Park (16 & 32 SLU respectively) were portions of longer distance, longer length trains.

During the same 1979-80 period, on the WCML there was a good number of Anglo-Scottish Freightliners booked for 64 SLU & two electric locos for Shap & Beattock. Couple of examples are in scans below.

Presumably one 5-wagon fixed set was equivalent to 16 SLU. So the normal 64 SLU trains comprised 4x sets = 20 wagons.

An exception was 4E75 20:00 Coatbridge FLT to Stockton FLT at 80 SLU - presumably 5x sets = 25 wagons for that train.

 

[MarkWi72]

Many thanks both, for your detailed answers. Very interesting WCML presumably has more double track than ECML ( once WCML is north of Weaver Jn). This limits the pathways for trains , but how many loops are there? I presume this limits the longer trains.

 

[Wilts Wanderer]

Freightliner in recent years have been pushing for an increased number of their Class 4 paths to be planned for 775m overall trainlength. This has implications for looping etc.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

20 generally for 1070 tons for a 47 (1350 for a 37 + 31) , 1600 for a heavy with 2x37.

1600 for example the 1358 Tilbury for 30 wagons (FFA /FGA) as far as Crewe Basford Hall when it split for 15 Trafford Park and 15 Garston.

This was 1980