POISONING THE WELL

THE movement of coal dominated the freight traffic carried by Britain’s railways until relatively recently, when the need to reduce carbon emissions resulted in a rundown of coal-fired power stations, resulting in the minimal amount of coal traffic now handled.

Long-term planning by Railfreight, the British Rail sector created in 1982 to manage the future of the business, identified this threat and therefore wanted to develop a more diverse traffic portfolio.

With this in mind, seven sub-sectors were created to stimulate targeted development, and with a high market share already held for bulk movements, growth needed to come by attracting smaller wagonload consignments.

Each of new sub-sectors included elements of wagon load traffic, with examples including household coal, motor vehicle distribution for smaller importers, fuel oil for traction depots, raw materials for manufacturing paper, and canned goods. Therefore optimism remained that early growth of the Speedlink wagonload network – which had started life with an air-braked Bristol to Glasgow service in 1972 before expanding and being branded as Speedlink in 1977 – would continue.

Wagonload woes

The initial rate of growth had been restricted by the availability of air-braked wagons, although rolling stock used for train ferry services was already so equipped, which resulted in the early addition to the network of services from Harwich.

Routes were carefully planned to achieve high payloads on trunk services, and there was an active process to allocate any new air-braked wagons to traffic that was still conveyed by legacy wagonload services (described as OWL, ‘other wagon load’).

Wagonload traffic was confined solely to the Speedlink network by 1986, and BR strengthened its market focus even further by creating Railfreight Distribution (RfD) in 1987 with the aim of targeting the growing logistics industry. RfD also managed Freightliner container services, which had been returned to BR as a result of the 1978 Transport Act, as well as train ferries and movements on behalf of the Ministry of Defence. At