Possible non-passenger use of Class 769s

[gordonjahn]

both correct. The problem is that few mail terminals/ amazon warehouse type locations are close to the railway.

OK, I'll bite.. running though Amazon's locations, most are within 4 miles of a train line (17/18), just under half are within 3 miles (8/18), a few are less than a mile (3/18); 2 appear to be adjacent to freight facilities (Bardon Hill and Doncaster).

Spoiler: Full List of Sites

Rugeley (BHX1) 2.2 miles Rugeley Town
Coalville (BHX2) Adjacent to Bardon Hill freight line
Daventry (BHX3) 7.8 miles to DIRFT
Coventry (BHX4) 4.0 Coventry Arena
Doncaster (LBA1, LBA2) 3.3 miles Doncaster (adjacent to freight yard)
Dunstable (LTN4) 3.6 miles Leagrave
Hemel Hempstead (LTN2) 3.7 miles Apsley
Manchester (MAN1) 2.7 miles Manchester Airport
Ridgmont, Milton Keynes (LTN1) 0.8 miles Ridgmont
Peterborough (DPE1, EUK5) 3.5 miles Peterborough (but adjacent to line)
Rugby (Opens 2018) 2.2 miles Rugby
Tilbury (LCY2) 0.8 miles Tilbury
Warrington (MAN2) 1.8 miles Sankey
Bolton (MAN3) (Opened 2018) 3.1 miles Atherton
Bathgate (DEH1, SEH1) 3.1 miles Bathgate
Dunfermline (Fife) (EDI4) 2.5 miles Dalgety Bay,
Gourock (Inverclyde) (GLA1) 3.1 miles, Gourock
Crymlyn Burrows, Swansea (CWL1) 3.8 miles Briton Ferry

What becomes obvious is that as big a challenge would be any form of freight facility at nearby stations - squeezing freight into Manchester Airport sounds a challenge and some of these "nearest" stations are pretty small so taking and loading a truckload of goods onto a 769 might be tricky.

The point, I guess, would be to see if the delivery format works and for that I'd guess if this went ahead for Amazon, they'd maybe focus on their Doncaster and Coalville sites where freight lines are nearby possibly with something at DIRFT - they could trial easy access sites relatively cheaply. If it works, look at connecting up more warehouses. If it doesn't work, they haven't wasted much money trying.

 

[Grumpy]

both correct. The problem is that few mail terminals/ amazon warehouse type locations are close to the railway.

The problem is the difficulty of finding suitably sized sites sites offering good road access and the possibility of a good rail connection. If dealing with mail/time critical parcels then you need to be alongside a main line with at least 300m level frontage onto the railway. There are hardly any of these-on any stretch of line railways tend to be in cuttings, on embankments/viaducts or passing through land which is green belt or zoned by the local authority for some other purpose which will make planning permission nigh on impossible. That's before having to deal with the nimbys and the shock of encountering the railway management culture and costs.

 

[AM9]

OK, I'll bite.. running though Amazon's locations, most are within 4 miles of a train line (17/18), just under half are within 3 miles (8/18), a few are less than a mile (3/18); 2 appear to be adjacent to freight facilities (Bardon Hill and Doncaster).

What becomes obvious is that as big a challenge would be any form of freight facility at nearby stations - squeezing freight into Manchester Airport sounds a challenge and some of these "nearest" stations are pretty small so taking and loading a truckload of goods onto a 769 might be tricky.

The point, I guess, would be to see if the delivery format works and for that I'd guess if this went ahead for Amazon, they'd maybe focus on their Doncaster and Coalville sites where freight lines are nearby possibly with something at DIRFT - they could trial easy access sites relatively cheaply. If it works, look at connecting up more warehouses. If it doesn't work, they haven't wasted much money trying.

Given the nature of these distribution depots (mainly large tin sheds), and their not infrequent moves and closures as markets develop, if rail delivery over the long sectors of parcels traffic caught on, would it not be viable to build the odd loop on main routes with a basic platform against which parcel EMUs could stop to load/unload? These loops would effectively be the same as goods loops with faster entry and exit access minimising the disturbance that the parcel trains would have on through services. Other than the footprint of the main depot/warehouse, the additional land take adjacent to the railway would be minimal.
A distribution centre would be able to marshall arrival and departure batches under cover to be transferred to local delivery vehicles which being just outside centres of population would have access to the majority of dwellings and light industrial premises without competing with commuting and shopping road traffic. If click and collect was wanted, even that could be arranged from the road side and have the benfit of pooling the facilities between all of the users of the rail transfer facilities.
Addendum.
Having posted this note, I see that Grumpy offers the view that there would be many local issues that resist such a plan. That may be true for areas with little or no break in residential land used but most towns large enough to have town centre stations and heavy traffic also have light industrial areas on their periphery, and it is not unusual for those areas to line the mainline's entry route into the town.

 

[hwl]

OK, I'll bite.. running though Amazon's locations, most are within 4 miles of a train line (17/18), just under half are within 3 miles (8/18), a few are less than a mile (3/18); 2 appear to be adjacent to freight facilities (Bardon Hill and Doncaster).

Spoiler: Full List of Sites

Rugeley (BHX1) 2.2 miles Rugeley Town
Coalville (BHX2) Adjacent to Bardon Hill freight line
Daventry (BHX3) 7.8 miles to DIRFT
Coventry (BHX4) 4.0 Coventry Arena
Doncaster (LBA1, LBA2) 3.3 miles Doncaster (adjacent to freight yard)
Dunstable (LTN4) 3.6 miles Leagrave
Hemel Hempstead (LTN2) 3.7 miles Apsley
Manchester (MAN1) 2.7 miles Manchester Airport
Ridgmont, Milton Keynes (LTN1) 0.8 miles Ridgmont
Peterborough (DPE1, EUK5) 3.5 miles Peterborough (but adjacent to line)
Rugby (Opens 2018) 2.2 miles Rugby
Tilbury (LCY2) 0.8 miles Tilbury
Warrington (MAN2) 1.8 miles Sankey
Bolton (MAN3) (Opened 2018) 3.1 miles Atherton
Bathgate (DEH1, SEH1) 3.1 miles Bathgate
Dunfermline (Fife) (EDI4) 2.5 miles Dalgety Bay,
Gourock (Inverclyde) (GLA1) 3.1 miles, Gourock
Crymlyn Burrows, Swansea (CWL1) 3.8 miles Briton Ferry

What becomes obvious is that as big a challenge would be any form of freight facility at nearby stations - squeezing freight into Manchester Airport sounds a challenge and some of these "nearest" stations are pretty small so taking and loading a truckload of goods onto a 769 might be tricky.

The point, I guess, would be to see if the delivery format works and for that I'd guess if this went ahead for Amazon, they'd maybe focus on their Doncaster and Coalville sites where freight lines are nearby possibly with something at DIRFT - they could trial easy access sites relatively cheaply. If it works, look at connecting up more warehouses. If it doesn't work, they haven't wasted much money trying.

The former Power Station sidings at Rugeley would be ideal (200m)

 

[hwl]

Given the nature of these distribution depots (mainly large tin sheds), and their not infrequent moves and closures as markets develop, if rail delivery over the long sectors of parcels traffic caught on, would it not be viable to build the odd loop on main routes with a basic platform against which parcel EMUs could stop to load/unload. These loops would effectively be the same as goods loops with faster entry and exit access minimising the disturbance that the parcel trains would have on through services. Other than the footprint of the main depot/warehouse, the additional land take adjacent to the railway would be minimal.
A distribution centre would be able to marshall arrival and departure batches under cover to be transferred to local delivery vehicles which being just outside centres of population would have access to the majority of dwellings and light industrial premises without competing with commuting and shopping road traffic. If click and collect was wanted, even that could be arranged from the road side and have the benfit of pooling the facilities between all of the users of the rail transfer facilities.

We are effectively at stage 1, small trial to prove it works after that there are some obvious adaptation that would make thigns far easier.
Also worth bearing in mind that many new freight terminals (with rail access) that were previously paused are now being unpaused.

 

[MikePJ]

We're also talking about light parcels in roll cages rather than heavy freight. All that's needed is a platform the right height and some handling space - it doesn't need specialist handling equipment. Royal Mail have used roll cages on the 325s for years.

 

[gordonjahn]

We're also talking about light parcels in roll cages rather than heavy freight. All that's needed is a platform the right height and some handling space - it doesn't need specialist handling equipment. Royal Mail have used roll cages on the 325s for years.

Absolutely - but I'm imaging that a 4-car 769 leaves full from a distribution centre, so "some handling space" really means "4 carriage loads of roll cages" - is that 2-5 truck loads? I guess a double-deck 40ft trailer might fill 2 carriages? Either you have an on-platform pen for holding them, or there's space to park the trucks so you only single-handle each cage truck to train (or warehouse to train if possible). Maybe I'm overthinking the inevitable efficiency that would be demanded of a logistics solution.

 

[Nick Ashwell]

OK, I'll bite.. running though Amazon's locations, most are within 4 miles of a train line (17/18), just under half are within 3 miles (8/18), a few are less than a mile (3/18); 2 appear to be adjacent to freight facilities (Bardon Hill and Doncaster).

Spoiler: Full List of Sites

Rugeley (BHX1) 2.2 miles Rugeley Town
Coalville (BHX2) Adjacent to Bardon Hill freight line
Daventry (BHX3) 7.8 miles to DIRFT
Coventry (BHX4) 4.0 Coventry Arena
Doncaster (LBA1, LBA2) 3.3 miles Doncaster (adjacent to freight yard)
Dunstable (LTN4) 3.6 miles Leagrave
Hemel Hempstead (LTN2) 3.7 miles Apsley
Manchester (MAN1) 2.7 miles Manchester Airport
Ridgmont, Milton Keynes (LTN1) 0.8 miles Ridgmont
Peterborough (DPE1, EUK5) 3.5 miles Peterborough (but adjacent to line)
Rugby (Opens 2018) 2.2 miles Rugby
Tilbury (LCY2) 0.8 miles Tilbury
Warrington (MAN2) 1.8 miles Sankey
Bolton (MAN3) (Opened 2018) 3.1 miles Atherton
Bathgate (DEH1, SEH1) 3.1 miles Bathgate
Dunfermline (Fife) (EDI4) 2.5 miles Dalgety Bay,
Gourock (Inverclyde) (GLA1) 3.1 miles, Gourock
Crymlyn Burrows, Swansea (CWL1) 3.8 miles Briton Ferry

What becomes obvious is that as big a challenge would be any form of freight facility at nearby stations - squeezing freight into Manchester Airport sounds a challenge and some of these "nearest" stations are pretty small so taking and loading a truckload of goods onto a 769 might be tricky.

The point, I guess, would be to see if the delivery format works and for that I'd guess if this went ahead for Amazon, they'd maybe focus on their Doncaster and Coalville sites where freight lines are nearby possibly with something at DIRFT - they could trial easy access sites relatively cheaply. If it works, look at connecting up more warehouses. If it doesn't work, they haven't wasted much money trying.

Add to that Newport (Llanwern), right by the new CAF factory

 

[sprinterguy]

Absolutely - but I'm imaging that a 4-car 769 leaves full from a distribution centre, so "some handling space" really means "4 carriage loads of roll cages" - is that 2-5 truck loads? I guess a double-deck 40ft trailer might fill 2 carriages? Either you have an on-platform pen for holding them, or there's space to park the trucks so you only single-handle each cage truck to train (or warehouse to train if possible). Maybe I'm overthinking the inevitable efficiency that would be demanded of a logistics solution.

The class 325 units hold 42 York cages in the driving cars and 44 in the intermediate vehicles, while the newer double-stack artics hold 92 (Older variants hold 74): So yeah, about one double-deck trailer per 2 carriages.

I'm not sure how often these trains are likely to run fully loaded though, particularly in the early days of the trial.

 

[AM9]

Absolutely - but I'm imaging that a 4-car 769 leaves full from a distribution centre, so "some handling space" really means "4 carriage loads of roll cages" - is that 2-5 truck loads? I guess a double-deck 40ft trailer might fill 2 carriages? Either you have an on-platform pen for holding them, or there's space to park the trucks so you only single-handle each cage truck to train (or warehouse to train if possible). Maybe I'm overthinking the inevitable efficiency that would be demanded of a logistics solution.

Well, if it was planned to back trucks up to the platform that would involve a large plot of land at platform level.
If the major distribution centre was adjacent to the stop, trucks would deliver items as stock and orders would trigger selection/packing/dispatch process and marshall them into the drops. The drops in their roll cages would be aggregated and marshalled according to the train collection timetable. That would probably be flowed right back to the processing of orders level so goods on a specific train would be kept on the stock shelf until their train was due.
There's also the delivery of items from the rail drop to individual addresses. A much smaller operation could be deployed in towns, maybe including a click and collect desk. It might be that (say) justy one car of the train dropped off parcels at a smaller town's base.
All of this might sound very radicle and potentially costly, but we may be entering a time when the sheer volume of white van deliveries becomes unacceptable, (and consequentially a prohibitive cost on the markets of the goods being delivered).

 

[MikePJ]

Yeah, I was thinking much more of sub-trainload deliveries: the train makes several calls early in the morning, unloads a couple of roll cages at each station, where they're transferred to vans or bike couriers.

 

[Swanny200]

If it is for the likes of amazon, then I would assume it is for the smaller packages, (the ones that come in the cardboard packets that are a bit larger than a standard jiffy bag), now I know that the majority of the Scottish packages and the ones to the North of England, such as Newcastle, Carlisle etc... Come from Dunfermline for instance, so would there be a suitable path to pick up from a railway station near that depot at night when it is quiet, fill it up with however many york cages you can fit and take it along the ECML to Newcastle for forward transit by courier?, meaning that the lorries can take the larger stuff you get from Amazon like Telly's. It could be done overnight as long as it doesn't interfere with any freight or sleeper paths.

 

[Dr_Intoxicated]

Hounslow is actually North of the river, and the mail centre is next to the Waterloo to Windsor line very close to where the Feltham hump shunting yard was. It may even be on part of the original site

The yard was one of the biggest in the UK but closed in the 1960s

 

[PeterC]

Yeah, I was thinking much more of sub-trainload deliveries: the train makes several calls early in the morning, unloads a couple of roll cages at each station, where they're transferred to vans or bike couriers.

Although the parcel and newspaper handling facilities at these stations will have been removed or repurposed many years ago.

 

[AM9]

Although the parcel and newspaper handling facilities at these stations will have been removed or repurposed many years ago.

Aren't many of those now caged off with bicycle racks?

 

[Jon125]

Add to that Newport (Llanwern), right by the new CAF factory

Also add Avonmouth, Bristol 375m from rail line.

Oh and the BTM RM abandoned rail connection in favour of BPW new build that shut.

 

[AndrewE]

Given the nature of these distribution depots (mainly large tin sheds), and their not infrequent moves and closures as markets develop, if rail delivery over the long sectors of parcels traffic caught on, would it not be viable to build the odd loop on main routes with a basic platform against which parcel EMUs could stop to load/unload?

They wouldn't need to be loops (Wembley is on a spur needing a reversing move in a headshunt to get to the WCML) but it would make life easier at places, like Warrington, that weren't termini for the trains.
Something that hasn't been said yet is that with modern (or recent) D/EMUs they will be able to cope with gradients far better than the freight trains that our old marshalling yards were built for, so if a new facility was needed at a different level beside a running line then I imagine a fairly steeply graded access line could run up or down to the roughly level parcels platform. This would allow the use of sites adjacent to cuttings and embankments as long as the height difference was within the gradient : distance available for the access siding trade-off. This would open up far more sites than just assuming that the parcels facility has to be at the same level as the running lines.

Well, if it was planned to back trucks up to the platform that would involve a large plot of land at platform level.
If the major distribution centre was adjacent to the stop, trucks would deliver items as stock and orders would trigger selection/packing/dispatch process and marshall them into the drops...

A site the length of the train (plus a bit for returned empties) would be needed but I would think the width of the platform wouldn't be that great. After all, you only need a train's width to hold a train full of cages, plus an access track along the side away from the train. Either an adjacent shed (in which case cages can go directly to their spot on the platform) or a few lorry bays feeding the rear access roadway. With fixed formation trains you could even build in a bit of flexibility by having slightly deeper blocks of cages in each of the the door areas for the next 2 or 3 trains, but stop the trains in slightly different places so that the doors are right next to the blocks for the particular service, I hope that is understandable.
I like the idea of integrating the train schedules into the order-picking planning too.

 

[hwl]

Hounslow is actually North of the river, and the mail centre is next to the Waterloo to Windsor line very close to where the Feltham hump shunting yard was. It may even be on part of the original site

The yard was one of the biggest in the UK but closed in the 1960s

The other (west) end of the Feltham Yard is reopening for the new SWR depot (circa 10 tracks wide not the 30-35 that the old yard was)

 

[chorleyjeff]

Nope, the building is separated from the station by the Strand Road Branch

The Strand Road branch dives down and away from the platforms.

 

[hwl]

A couple of thoughts:
1. Lorry driver hours and break are an issue too so rail may be surprising helpful in some cases.
2. I suspect the large number of Amazon small parcels is a big target as this would enable more local delivery hubs to open (just transferring cages etc from double deck HGVs to local drivers)
3. Amazon currently don't have any warehouse south of the Thames but do have quite a few local delivery hubs and warehouse to delivery hub may be the target especially as most of the Southeast south of the Tames is at the mercy of the M25

 

[03_179]

The old Red Star office is still in situ at East Croydon but no idea what it's used for.

I think (although I might be wrong) that at Redhill there is the old Parcels platform but it is boarded up.

 

[hwl]

I think (although I might be wrong) that at Redhill there is the old Parcels platform but it is boarded up.

Track was lifted recently

 

[big all]

The old Red Star office is still in situ at East Croydon but no idea what it's used for.

I think (although I might be wrong) that at Redhill there is the old Parcels platform but it is boarded up.

to be fair assuming redhill would be a staging point in a through journey any dwell time clear off a through platform can just as easily use platform one
indeed it would occupy less main line time whilst moving as change ends can happen either tonbridge or reading branch
or indeed lift free easy access could be via reigate enroute or indeed a long shunt as a terminal service

 

[03_179]

Track was lifted recently

Ok thanks ... shame that I remember paper/postal trains with a 73 in there.

to be fair assuming redhill would be a staging point in a through journey any dwell time clear off a through platform can just as easily use platform one
indeed it would occupy less main line time whilst moving as change ends can happen either tonbridge or reading branch
or indeed lift free easy access could be via reigate enroute or indeed a long shunt as a terminal service

Redhill would be a good call point. Also East Croydon could be a good one too when the "Croydon Bottleneck" is removed.