ECML Freight between North East England, WCML and West Scotland

[Class 170101]

From https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/scottish-electrification-updates-discussion.90420/page-134 to discuss Freight poetntial between NE England, WCML and West Scotland.

If you are wiring for ECML freight (future potential) is there any future potential for electric freight on the ECML especially north of Newcastle given the number of Class 1 >100 mph paths wanted by East Coast - two or three, XC one, TPE one per hour, First Group 4/5 per day and Class 2 services between Newcastle and Morpeth / Chathill and between Dunbar / North Berwick and Edinburgh. Is there actually any room for Class 4 and Class 6 Freight?

 

[4-SUB 4732]

I believe all told you can ‘loop hop’ a 75mph electric each way between Millerhill and Newcastle all day in the new timetable. Fifth freedom almost demands it.

The same, I suspect, applies to Preston to Mossend.

I doubt freight gets a ‘fast’ path but the least is that it can get to / from Scotland in ample time and use of 90/92 motive power would permit said standard hourly path.

 

[Dr Hoo]

I believe all told you can ‘loop hop’ a 75mph electric each way between Millerhill and Newcastle all day in the new timetable. Fifth freedom almost demands it.

The same, I suspect, applies to Preston to Mossend.

I doubt freight gets a ‘fast’ path but the least is that it can get to / from Scotland in ample time and use of 90/92 motive power would permit said standard hourly path.

Can you explain this, please?

By analogy with use of the term in relation to air transport it would seem to imply that a company based in (say) the country of Wales would have the right to operate revenue services between the countries of Scotland and England.

 

[HSTEd]

Ofcourse if it really became an issue, 160km/h freight wagons do exist on the continent......

 

[edwin_m]

Electric haulage for the freight would help to some degree in keeping ahead of the passenger trains and reducing the number of loops visited, although less so than on the WCML as the gradients are gentler. But I'd guess with the demise of the coal traffic to England there are quite a lot of empty freight paths currently, timed for diesel and some of the northbound ones for 75mph (coal hoppers being rated for this speed when empty).

 

[Dr Hoo]

Most of the current daytime intermodal paths on the Tees-Mossend/Coatbridge and v.v. axis (with diesel traction) seem to get looped, one as many as four times between Millerhill and Newcastle, which hardly suggests oodles of capacity.