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Freight
‘One of the things
freight has always
had a problem with
is political influence;
we’ve never been
that co-ordinated
around that’
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company wanted to be vertically integrated,
so they’ve decided to buy a steelworks. These
days it’s quite hard to build a steelworks,
because of all the emissions regulations.
The product will initially be exported via
Teesport. It’s a very good news story for
us and for the area, to see all those jobs
generated again.’
GBRf’s other domestic market is
intermodal. It mainly operates out of
Felixstowe, a market that is slowly growing.
The port’s owner, Hutchison Ports, is
building a new rail terminal there for
30-wagon trains, due to open next year. So
Smith is hoping to be able to offer even more
services out of the port.
Like other freight operators, he would
like to see capacity improvements on the
network to allow freight to move around
more freely. And he would like to see more
inland terminals – something that the Rail
Freight Group has been pressing for.
‘A lot of inland terminals are quite
restricted; some of them are getting full.
You certainly need one in the Manchester,
Liverpool, Crewe corridor – there ought
to be money aimed towards that. You need
big inland terminals now like they’ve got in
Europe that concentrate a lot of modes of
transport in one area.’
He also makes the point that various rail
freight facilities across the country, both at
ports and at inland terminals, are owned by
a single operator. Although rival operators
can use the facilities where there are spare
slots, they are at the bottom of the pecking
order. GBRf has long wanted to operate out
of Southampton, but Freightliner owns the
main rail terminal there and it is currently at
full capacity. DB Schenker runs some services
from Southampton by loading up on the
dockside, but this slows down turnaround
time.
‘At Felixstowe, we have gone from 13
trains to 29 trains in the last seven or eight
years, with all operators operating out of
there. Southampton hasn’t grown anything
like that much. At Hams Hall all operators go
in and it’s grown hugely. Birch Coppice, with
all operators in, has also grown hugely. Other
terminals that are owned by one operator
haven’t grown in that way.’
GBRf has been talking to Network
Rail about the need for infrastructure
enhancements for its bulk markets, including
work in the north-east of England, which
would improve its ability to carry biomass
more freely. He is hoping that HS2 will
free up capacity on the West Coast Main
Line too.
The rail freight market has grown
enormously since privatisation – in many
ways freight has been the real success story
of private investment in the railways. But
growth is often held up, or prevented, by
Nimbyism, with locals not wanting freight
yards in their neighbourhood.
‘One of the things freight has always had
a problem with is political influence; we’ve
never been that co-ordinated around that.
What people need to realise is that 50 per
cent of the electricity in a Pendolino is carried
by a coal train, so without our operating these
types of services, there’s a lot of other parts of
UK plc that wouldn’t function.’
Are there other goods that we will see
being carried by rail in the next few years
‘In terms of commodities, always. We’ve
just started carrying fuel that was previously
on the road, for a company called Greenergy.
But what people don’t appreciate is that
intermodal boxes already carry so many
different things: we export components for
jet fighters to India, we import wine from
Australia.
‘As the world modernises, you’ve got to
make sure that rail’s integral to that. You have
got to get under the skin of your customers
to see what their issues are. And that’s what’s
fun about freight – it’s not about trains, it’s
about the economics of power generation;
it’s about the economics of how we all drink
a bottle of wine from Australia; it’s about the
economics of getting petrol in your car in
Aberystwyth.’
n See www.railpro.co.uk/johnsmith for a
video of John Smith expanding on some of
the points in this interview
Page 30 march 2012