East West Rail services

[gordonthemoron]

It would be nice if they built a station where East-West crosses HS2 (and build a new city there too)

 

[jimm]

The freight traffic to/from Felixstowe appears to be a mixture of local sailings to/from Northern Europe, sailings to more distant ports and sailings via Europe to further afield. Some of this trade, but by no means all, may decline following Brexit. My previous posting on this particular aspect was merely to point out that an assumption that trade via Felixstowe will inevitably increase markedly is not necessarily correct.

Who said anything about it increasing - it doesn't need to increase for more trains to run - the port and the freight operators have made all sorts of noises for a long time now about how the rail infrastructure is a constraint on the volume of boxes that can go by rail, both on the Felixstowe branch and further afield.

Before the 16th century, Britain's most important ports were on the South and East coasts, but the period between the 16th and 20th centuries, when Britain looked outwards towards the wider world, saw the development of ports on the west coast such as Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow. These have declined markedly following the loss of empire and joining the EU in favour of the East coast ports, but the balance might alter at least slightly following Brexit.

Thanks for the history lesson. Well aware of all that. But the last time I looked, Southampton - also rather an important container port for global trade, was still on the South Coast - and Felixstowe wouldn't be half as important as it is were it not for all the ships serving the Far East and North America calling in on the way to and from Rotterdam, which are the sorts of places where the boxes on container trains are coming from - not Europe - for most European internal traffic, cut-throat road haulage competition is still king.

The critical issue regarding Felixstowe is provision of key road and rail links to the English Midlands where the traffic can join routes north. Hence the desirability of removing bottlenecks on the rail line from Felixstowe to Nuneaton via Bury/Ely/Peterborough/Syston, so that fewer freight trains from Felixstowe need to be routed via the North London line. Rebuilding Cambridge-Bedford is not needed for this strategy.

You don't say... but you have completely ignored the point I made about pressure for extra paths from passenger operators in North London - and for containers to and from Thamesport on the Isle of Grain - where any paths released from use by Felixstowe services once the route to Nuneaton is improved are quickly going to be filled by passenger and other freight services.

So when the Nuneaton route is not available, or all the paths for freight to go that way quickly fill up, where do you propose sending trains instead if the London alternative is no longer there? What route would extra trains from the likes of Bristol or South Wales use if there is traffic on offer to fill them? East West via Cambridge can offer an additional link to the ECML, MML and WCML - just like the Nuneaton axis - plus the GWML, all without going anywhere near London.

The more options and back-ups there are, the better. Or are you blind to all the issues there are fitting in Southampton container trains on the WCML when the route to the West Midlands via Oxford is not available for whatever reason, such as the Harbury landslip and engineering blockades?

For some mysterious reason, all planning for East West Rail - everywhere between Oxford and Cambridge, is being done on the basis that the structure gauge will be to W10 or W12+ clearances, both of which allow 9ft 6in hi-cube containers to be carried on standard flat wagons. I wonder why...