move over freightliner, we want to get into ... - Rail Professional

INTERVIEW
‘We are key to UK plc, whether it be containers
coming through big ports or whether it be coal
traffic. A better appreciation amongst politicians of
the importance of freight in the DfT is really needed’
Felixstowe, in order for rail to keep up with market growth in
container shipments. Britain is importing more and more
goods each year as manufacturing is increasingly outsourced
to Asia, but the railways won’t be able to keep up without some
infrastructure changes. At the moment, Felixstowe has very
little capacity for any extra rail services, mainly because the
line out of it is just a single track.
‘What we’re trying to assure at the moment is that the
infrastructure’s going to be there, such as twin tracking from
the port of Felixstowe. The Port of Felixstowe is going through
the planning process, but once that goes ahead, there’ll
probably be an increase of 50-75 per cent freight traffic out of
there. The difficulty, of course, is a lot of it goes round where
the Olympics is, where Crossrail is.’
Smith is hoping the Freight Utilisation Strategy will bring
about some much-needed changes. ‘An integrated freight
strategy would be good from the Government. You sometimes
wonder whether there is any joined-up thinking. We are key
to UK plc, whether it be containers coming through big ports
or whether it be coal traffic. Coal is still 50 per cent of the
generation of electricity in the UK. Maybe it’s our own fault,
but a better appreciation amongst politicians of the importance
of freight in the DfT is really needed.’
The remainder of GBRf’s work is in infrastructure services
and hiring out train crew for haulage work. The company has
just extended its contract with Serco, to drive its rail grinding
and infrastructure monitoring services for Network Rail.
One of GBRf’s most prestigious contracts is driving trains
for Royal Mail. EWS took this on after privatisation, but after
a few years Royal Mail decided to carry all its mail by road.
Three years ago, GBRf managed to convince them that it was
a waste to have unused mail trains sitting about, so it has begun
running some of them again. The contract was worth around
£50m in EWS’s time, but it’s just a small job now, bringing in
£3 or £4m for GBRf. The contract is currently up for renewal
and GBRf is hoping to extend it, perhaps for a longer period
this time.
‘We provide the drivers and we manage the trains for them,
and we interface with their logistics teams to operate the
services,’ says Smith. ‘They buy one train to Glasgow and one
train from Glasgow to London a day and we operate those.
We’re very flexible in being able to adapt. We’ve done things
like re-routing after Grayrigg and increasing capacity when
roads were closed after the Hemel Hempstead fire.’
Smith, 45, started out as an engineer on the railways, having
begun as a toolmaker. He joined British Rail almost 30 years
ago and ended up running maintenance depots. At
privatisation he worked in Norwich for Anglia Railways, part
of GB Railways, and rose to deputy managing director. He was
then offered the chance to head up a new freight division, and
the rest is history. He’s now based in Kettering, near
Peterborough, dividing his time between the London office
and various depots around the country.
So, what next for GBRf? Will it be entering into the
supermarket market, like DRS has done with Eddie Stobart?
Or perhaps expanding into Europe, like Freightliner has?
The answer to both is ‘quite possibly’.
‘I think as green politics come into play, it begins to swing
it,’ he says of the supermarket market. ‘It’s difficult to make
these trains pay if we’re carrying the risk of filling the trains.
And I don’t know how the deals work that exist between DRS
and Stobart. You can make money out of freight over short
distances if you can get the utilisation of the assets.’
And this is one of the key things for a small company like
GBRf, which pays a lot for its locos – and pays good wages to
its drivers. The company pays a high rate for leasing them
because it gets them in smaller batches than its larger rivals
would, plus it didn’t inherit any at privatisation. So GBRf can’t
afford to have locomotives sitting around unused for long,
making infrequent runs to obscure destinations unworkable,
unless the loco can be put to work doing something else in
between.
‘You tend to end up with the train in the wrong place and
then sending a driver up to fetch it. Unless you can get a fivetrains-a-week
type of service, you have to find other ways to
get value for money out of your assets. The key to it is flexible
workforce and utilisation of your assets. It’s like planes, if
they’re sat on the ground, they’re not earning money.’
GBRf currently leases 27 Class 66s and five Class 73, plus
a few old electro-diesels used in the south of England and a
handful of others for shunting.
14 RAIL PROFESSIONAL : MAY 2007