AT 10.00 on Wednesday, April 26, the rail container terminal at Felixstowe North was busy. Four Class 66 locomotives in a range of liveries stood ready for action, with two GB Railfreight examples already at the head of their trains: 4M29 (10.28 to Birch Coppice) and 4M33 (10.46 to Hams Hall).
Both destinations are in North Warwickshire – Birch Coppice is on the freight-only branch from Kingsbury ground frame, which is about five miles south of Tamworth (high level platforms) on the Birmingham line. Hams Hall is an intermodal terminal on the north side of the Birmingham-Nuneaton line between Coleshill Parkway and Whitacre Junction, on the site of the former coal-fired power station.
Both flows exemplify the expansion of rail traffic between Felixstowe and the West Midlands following massive growth at the Suffolk port. Widespread adoption of maritime containerisation has already justified heavy investment on the route, and spawned extensive plans to transform what had become a series of vaguely connected secondary lines into a freight artery across the body of England.
I was accompanied and advised on my journey by Ian Kapur, GBRf’s head of strategic access planning, whom I had first met when I was area manager with British Rail at Exeter and he was at university there. After two exams following the Hutchison Ports safety briefing session (no pass, no entry), and having been shown round the complex by GBRf operations manager David Kidd, we climbed aboard GM ‘footballer’ Class 66 No. 66726 Sheffield Wednesday, an appropriate selection for the day of our journey.
Leaving the docks
Felixstowe driver Ben Catton was waiting for us and ready for off, although departure time seemed some 15min distant. Ian explained that the new Felixstowe North terminal is further from the Network Rail boundary than the old one, on which the timings are still based, and much of the extra distance is at 5mph. We were escorted off the premises by port staff, depositing our port radio, then passing the local pilot No. 08531 and an incoming Freightliner headed by No. 66568 on the adjacent ‘Oysterbed Road Siding 2’. Next, we joined the line from the Central terminal (formerly the North terminal) and edged towards ‘starting point’ signal FW9074, 13½min from the outset.
Following modernisation, the Felixstowe branch is now
