Winthorpe
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Note: If information about this project has been posted elsewhere please bring it to my attention.
This proposed project reported in The Times looks promising. Network Rail is proposing to adapt the line from Folkestone to Wembley in north London, via Ashford and Maidstone in Kent, at the cost of £10 million to enable freight trains from across Europe to deliver goods direct to their destination in Britain.
I hope it is approved. Looks like a cheap big win:
Edit: Diagram added to the quote
This proposed project reported in The Times looks promising. Network Rail is proposing to adapt the line from Folkestone to Wembley in north London, via Ashford and Maidstone in Kent, at the cost of £10 million to enable freight trains from across Europe to deliver goods direct to their destination in Britain.
I hope it is approved. Looks like a cheap big win:
Network Rail’s plan to unblock the Channel Tunnel and get freight back on track
On May 6, 1994, the Channel Tunnel reconnected Britain and the European mainland for the first time since the Ice Age, yet, in the three decades that have elapswww.thetimes.co.uk
Network Rail’s plan to unblock the Channel Tunnel and get freight back on track
Britain’s rail routes are too narrow for EU cargo trains. Could a £10 million revamp of platforms and tunnels fix the squeeze, asks Nicholas Hellen
On May 6, 1994, the Channel Tunnel reconnected Britain and the European mainland for the first time since the Ice Age, yet, in the three decades that have elapsed since then, importers and exporters have struggled to capture the prize of direct trade with Continental Europe, and Asia beyond.
Freight travels in standard containers and wagons across Europe, but once they emerge from the Channel Tunnel, the problems begin. Tunnels, bridges and station platforms on the conventional railway lines in Kent do not have sufficient clearance for European-sized containers and wagons to continue uninterrupted to London.
HS1, the high speed line between the Channel Tunnel and St Pancras, is capable of taking them, but has weight restrictions and is so expensive that only one freight train a day takes this path.
For the rest, containers bound for the UK are offloaded from trains onto lorries and taken to British customers by road.
There have been attempts to take rail freight into Britain, but they have all run into the buffers.
In 2017, the first direct rail freight service from China to Britain travelled from Yiwu, a city in the eastern province of Zhejiang, and after a journey of 7,500 miles via Kazakhstan and Poland, delivered its cargo of clothes and white goods to Barking in East London. It took 18 days, half the time of the sea journey, but hopes that it would signal the revival of ancient Silk Road trading routes to the West petered out. Industry sources said it was never more than a political gesture to showcase China’s One Belt, One Road programme.
Then last month, a German rail company, TX Logistik, launched a direct rail freight service to Barking from Cologne, which connects to Italy, Romania and Turkey. It pulled mega trailers which can be fairly easily hooked up to HGVs at Barking. Nick Radcliffe, UK sales agent for TX Logistik, said it had to stop at Barking because “it’s as far as you can take a freight train without hitting anything”.
According to Radcliffe, by eliminating a sea crossing it would cut the journey time to London from five days to 36 hours; each train would remove 38 HGVs from Britain’s overcrowded roads, and each wagon would save a tonne of CO2.
Yet, at €1365 for a container from Germany, it was pricey and demand was weak, so last month, the company suspended the service.
Now the government wants to have a go. The Department for Transport (DfT) has held discussions with Network Rail to unblock a route that would enable freight trains from across Europe to deliver goods direct to their destination in Britain.
Network Rail is proposing to adapt the line from Folkestone to Wembley in north London, via Ashford and Maidstone in Kent, at a modest cost of £10 million. A decision is due by December, and the alterations would be carried out between next year and 2029. They include widening a tunnel and lowering some tracks to enable overseas freight containers to pass through. If successful, it could take an estimated 20,000 HGVs off the roads each week.
Once trains arrive in Wembley they could continue up the West Coast Main Line via a major distribution hub at Daventry in Northamptonshire and on to Scotland.
Much of the rail network beyond London already has sufficient clearance because lines have been adapted for shipping containers arriving at ports such as Southampton, Felixstowe and Immingham from the Far East and North America.
The owners of Eurotunnel have long been frustrated at the unfulfilled potential of the crossing, and have been pressing the DfT to improve the connections from landfall in Kent.
The current use of HGVs has contributed to overcrowding at the Port of Dover and on the M20 in Kent, where a contraflow system known as Operation Brock, an acronym for Brexit Operations across Kent, has cost the economy up to an estimated £250 million a day. It was most recently deployed over the Spring bank holiday in May.
Getlink, which operates the Channel Tunnel, said the Dover-Calais sea route across the English Channel accounts for two thirds of trade between Britain and the European Union, with several thousand lorries crossing on ferries each day.
Jean-Pierre Ramirez, railway network director at Getlink, said a switch from road to rail delivery would reduce food prices in the shops and help business efficiency. Tesco already imports fruit and vegetables via direct rail freight from Valencia in Spain and Toyota, Jaguar Land Rover and BMW use freight trains to move car parts to and from their British manufacturing plants. It is understood that a number of carmakers are exploring a wholesale switch from road to rail for components and finished vehicles moving between the UK and their factories across Europe.
However, Yann Leriche, chief executive of Getlink, wants a more ambitious improvement to Britain’s rail routes, which would allow even bigger containers — known as W12s — to pass through and cost £50 million, although UK rail sources claimed that was an underestimate. He said: “£50 million is not a lot of money to fully unlock the potential of making more trade, more business, more jobs.”
Ramirez is concerned that the scheme being developed by the DfT and Network Rail will be a false economy because operators will still have to transfer their goods from the standard wagon used across Europe to a different wagon capable of squeezing through tight gaps.
Henry Bates, Network Rail’s head of freight, said he supported Getlink’s more ambitious plans but defended the decision to press ahead with a cut-price option for now: “We are passionate about accelerating the shift to rail, and improving our network’s capability to move bigger loads is a key part of that work, especially in unlocking the potential of the Channel Tunnel.
“GetLink has presented an ambitious plan that we support and making W12 a standard across key routes must be our ultimate end-game: Plan A. But it will take time and money.
“In the meantime, for a comparably much more modest investment, we can unlock substantial opportunities for through tunnel freight that could be delivered within the next five years, taking thousands of daily lorry journeys off our congested motorway network: our Plan B.”
Edit: Diagram added to the quote
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