edwin_m
Veteran Member
Is any of this possible? Freight, even parcels tends to be heavy, and top heavy too relative to a passenger carriage, so how fast can you take them round bends on the main lines safely?
The centre of gravity of a freight train may be a little bit higher, but the speed restrictions on curves are way way less than the speed at which the train might overturn. The defining factor is usually the comfort of passengers.
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But they are not full height. You need something you can wheel trolleys through if it being used for parcels.
This has been tried several times, including the prototype LFA (low flying aircraft) which was a Mk1 BG with giant ball bearing set into the floor so aircraft baggage container could be inserted through the doors then rolled into position.
More recently the 325 is a passenger multiple unit body with roller shutters instead of the sliding doors so cage trolleys of mail can be brought in and wheeled to stowage positions within the train. There will probably be plenty of redundant 31x units over the next decade or so if anybody wants to convert more of these.
In its early years Heathrow Express also had an area reserved for baggage, which could be checked in at Paddington and was then stored in enclosed trolleys in a locked compartment at the Heathrow end of each set.
The other option would be small containers, which uses less labour and I imagine loading from the side by forklift could be done under live OLE. There have been various schemes to do this over the years but none has been successful enough to be continued.