Railways

Freight Trains

Most of the references to railways on this site refer to passenger services, however we must not forget the rôle of the freight train. Indeed freight is what the railways were originally invented for - to carry heavy loads of coal and other minerals across Britain in far greater quantities and at far higher speeds than was possible with the canals. 175 years later the railways still excel at this, although nowadays the competition mostly comes from the roads - and not inland waterways.

Amongst the advantages of more railfreight are:-

On average each modern freight train removes the equivalent of between 50 and 60 heavy lorry journeys from our roads.
Freight trains can travel at higher speeds than road vehicles, which are limited to just 100km/h (62mph) - or less.
Sending freight by rail is much safer - 20% of all road deaths can be attributed to goods vehicles, even though they represent just 7% of the total number of vehicles on the roads.
Railfreight is also much kinder on both the local and global environments - per tonne carried, rail produces around 10% of the carbon dioxide produced by road transport, whilst...
...road transport requires between 4 to 7 times more energy than rail...
  ...furthermore, since energy efficiency is directly related to carbon dioxide emissions, this means that (apart from shipping) rail is significantly more energy efficient than all the other modes of transport.
All in all, our railways produce less than 1% of the total UK emissions of carbon dioxide - compared to 21% from road transport (of which 8% is from road freight).

Much of the above information was sourced from the Freight on Rail  http://www.freightonrail.org.uk/ website, which on the facts and figures page lists more of the economic, social and environmental arguments for rail freight.

A survey conducted in December 2003 for the Rail Freight Group  http://www.rfg.org.uk/ found that 79% of people identified transferring freight off roads onto rail as a priority for Government in tackling congestion on motorways. This was more than twice the number advocating reductions in road works and more than 4 times the number in favour of building more roads.

Freight train drivers are skilled professionals...

Freight train drivers are highly skilled personnel who before being allowed to operate a train along a section of track must spend many hours learning both the characteristics of the specific routes they will be using (ie: location of signals, junctions, speed limits, bridges / tunnels, etc) and all aspects of the different types of trains they will be driving (ie: proper function of every switch, location and use of safety features, etc.) Then they must take a tough examination.

... whereas HGV drivers are sometimes virtually unskilled

This is in stark contrast to the situation on the roads where anyone with a heavy goods vehicle driving license can use any road, in any weather condition, no matter how familiar they are (or are not) with that road. This causes problems when, all too often, they try to pass under a bridge too low for the vehicle they are driving. "Bridge bashing" is a nuisance because despite being the innocent party rail services must be halted until an engineer inspects the bridge and declares it safe - ie: neither it nor the railway tracks have been shifted out of alignment, and the abutments / supports can still carry the weight of the passing trains.

Although bound by safety regulations that require them to keep stopping for rest periods it is not uncommon for long distance juggernaut drivers to nod off (ie: fall asleep) while driving, causing danger to both themselves and other road users. Admittedly this is not always their fault - as it is frequently the situation that their employers demand that they adhere to delivery schedules which are impossible to follow whilst observing the appropriate driving hours etc; regulations.

Rigged economics

Perhaps the biggest hurdle to be faced by railfreight operators is that compared to road freight operators they do not compete in an equal market (or, to put it another way, there is an unlevel playing field). As with all other forms of road transport roadfreight is usually costed on the basis of the 'marginal' costs of the driver plus road fuel. The cost of the vehicles, maintenance, road-tax etc is rarely taken into account - and even when they are then only the direct costs are noted. The cost of highway maintenance is usually ignored - primarily because "the government" pays for it. As a contrast railfreight charges include all the up-front charges, which includes staff & fuel (etc) as well as the track access charges - aka the railway equivalent of road pricing.

Reducing the number of heavy lorries on our roads would also lower the significant financial burden of expensive repairs caused by them. Road freight taxes never cover the true cost of road maintenance, and when governments try to raise taxes to realistic levels the truckers often go on strike - blocking roads and rail lines alike as they hold their fellow citizens and unfortunate foreigners to ransom! (This problem is not unique to France - at the time of writing similar is happening in Chile, South America).

The fastest, safest and most environmentally sound way for heavy lorries and juggernauts to travel is by train - either with the cabs (above left) or as unaccompanied trailers (above right). Trains such as these operate on several routes across Europe - the trains shown here (at Flüelen on the St Gotthard route across the Swiss Alps) would be linking Germany with Italy. This would partly be because the Swiss do NOT want them on their roads(!) but also because it is much more cost effective than driving up and over the Alpine mountains. Similar trains serve other routes too - for instance through Austria.

Maybe these images could provide the inspiration for a cheaper alternative (for us in Britain) to widening the M1, M6, M25, M62 etc; motorways - with trains using a reopened and electrified Great Central route along the spine of England (including the Woodhead section over the Pennines). It might even prove possible to transfer some freight trains from the currently oversubscribed trunk rail routes which are still extant - thereby leaving more "paths" for more InterCity and local passenger services along those routes too.

To better see that the unaccompanied trailers in the view above right have road wheels click that image for a larger version .

Two video clips on the topic of freight trains have been placed on the 'youtube' film sharing site and can be watched (in new windows) by clicking the links below...

• This film shows heavy goods vehicles (juggernauts, lorries, trucks, etc) travelling by train with footage from Flüelen and near to Schaffhausen, Switzerland..
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8faYMD8xlGE


• This film uses footage sourced from Ariolo, which is also on the St Gotthard route across the Swiss Alps, to show how even one very long electrically hauled freight train can carry many dozens of road vehicles worth of goods - creating virtually no air pollution.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VwiqC578-E.

Road damage; its a 'weighty' matter

In Britain the maximum weight limit for juggernauts used to be 41 tons but under pressure from the EU that has had to be raised to 44 tons. Before the limit went up however, many roads and (especially) bridges needed strengthening to accept the greater weight. (Yet another burden on the British taxpayer!)

According to the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges which was published by the Highways Agency in 1994, a 40 tonne, 5 axle lorry causes over 10,000 times more damage to road surfaces than an average car. Further research in 2006 (by the Freight on Rail group) found that HGVs are up to 160,000 times more damaging to road surfaces than the average car; therefore some of the heaviest road repair costs are almost exclusively attributable to the heaviest vehicles. Yet despite this our govt. still let the EU impose even heavier lorries on us.

As a contrast the Swiss, realising the damage caused by heavy lorries to their roads, have a maximum weight limit of just 28 tons - instead they require heavier lorries to travel by train. The idea may sound weird but the concept is already well proven in both Europe and North America. As the image above left shows, the juggernauts travel on special flat-bed wagons and their drivers travel in attached passenger carriages. The Swiss are so keen on railfreight that to increase capacity of their rail system they are investing in (ie: building) several 'base' level tunnels through the Alps as this will considerably reduce journey times compared to services over the present-day tortuous routes which require trains to climb up one side of the mountains and then down the other. The first of these opened in June 2007. Further information on AlpTransit can be found on this page at the free online "Wikipedia" encyclopædia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alptransit .

To further encourage railfreight the Swiss also have many factories connected to their rail system. At one time many British factories were similarly connected to our rail system.

To encourage more railfreight here in Britain we need to...

To encourage more railfreight here in Britain we need to reconnect more of our factories to our rail system, to help achieve this there is a need for land-use planning criteria which encourages companies to think rail, to show willing the British government should stop talking and take action - for starters it could reinstate the rail freight grants which were suddenly cancelled in 2002 after 25 years of successfully taking lorries off our roads.

There is also a need to ensure that the railway infrastructure serving our ports (sea, air) is capable of taking the required railway traffic levels - plus that there in a national network of interconnected core routes serving these ports. This means that for some locations the network capacity may need boosting, with extra tracks, signalling which allows trains to run more frequently, stronger physical infrastructure for longer & heavier freight trains, gauge enhancement so that physically larger Continental trains can use more of the network (and container trains carrying the 9' 6" deep sea containers), and possibly even line reopenings / other diversionary routes to relieve on-rail congestion in major conurbations.

The electrification of all core freight routes would also provide many benefits - to avoid duplication this topic is more fully explored on a dedicated railway electrification page.

To further reduce the numbers of large HGV's on our roads there is also a need for a network of local transhipment points where long distance railfreight could be switched to roads for final local delivery - perhaps by electric vans. In some areas such local distribution centres could become truly multi-modal by being located close to waterways / airports too.

What we need to avoid, however is a repeat of a previous scenario where in the worst cases the railway system tied goods up for weeks, increasing (stocking, etc) costs and ultimately leading to increased prices for the end user / high street shops, etc. This is one of the reasons why businesses abandoned railfreight for distribution of food, components and goods in the first place.

Are there any other railway routes which could be used?

Some rail lines are no longer part of the national railway system and there is no reason why track sharing arrangements between freight trains and light rail (or even a preserved / museum railway, if it is in the right location) could not be utilised - with track grants towards infrastructure expenditure. For many years freight trains used to operate over surface sections of the London Underground (at off-peak hours) and there is no reason why this too could not be encouraged to be reintroduced.

Urban tramfreight

Some cities are also using (or investigating using) their urban tram systems for tramfreight. The concept is not new, as in years gone by many urban tramway / streetcar systems also hosted freight services. Here in Britain street operation of tramfreight was practised in Burnley and Huddersfield - carrying coal to a power station (in Burnley) and to the Mills (in Huddersfield).

In the German city of Dresden the CarGoTram carries goods along a 4.5 km route between the Dresden-Friedrichstadt railfreight terminal and the Volkswagen car factory at Straßburger Platz. Services are operated by two specially built 5-section tramfreight railcars which operate at approximately 40 minute intervals making as many as 36 journeys daily. These 60 metre (180') freight trams can carry as much as 60 tons (214 cubic meters) - this being equivalent to the carrying capacity of 3 x 18 metre heavy goods vehicles. In all they are estimated to eliminate as many as 65 heavy goods vehicle journeys daily from the city streets. To ensure compatibility with the passenger services all CarGoTram journeys are timetabled - with a typical journey time of 14 minutes.

Other cities have also been trialling the use of freight trams. In Zürich, Switzerland and Vienna, Austria special trams are used for the collection of materials destined for recycling. Zürich's CargoTram does not replace the dustcart but replaces local residents having to use their cars to take bulky items such as unwanted furniture, computers, etc to the recycling centre, these being items that dustcarts do not normally take. The logic behind this is that in a world where a person does not need a car to get to work, to go shopping, to go out for a beer or to go skiing, disposing of rubbish was deemed to be one of the last viable reasons for 'needing a car'. CargoTram services are considered innovative and prestigious; the use of electric trams instead of diesel lorries is part of the ethos behind a broader concept which encourages people to have a high quality of life without air pollution.

Addtional information in this section comes from these websites:

• ...The Rail Freight Group www.rfg.org.uk which is the representative body of the rail freight industry, covering suppliers, manufacturers, customers, operators and contractors who, together, make the business work. Its objective is to increase the volume and market share of freight carried profitably by rail.
• ...Freight on Rail  http://www.freightonrail.org.uk/ , which is a partnership of the rail freight operators, Rail Freight Group, Network Rail. the transport trade unions and Transport 2000.

Passenger trains are derived from the horse-drawn stagecoaches which existed at the time when the railways first began. These early trains usually comprised of a specialist traction device (ie: heavy steam locomotive / engine) pulling a rake of short 4 wheel carriages. At the time there were three 'classes' of travel with 3rd class passengers travelling in what amounted to open wagons without so much as a roof to keep them dry in the rain. 2nd class passengers fared a little better as their carriages had roofs and wooden seats whilst, as is still the situation today, 1st class passengers travelled in the most luxurious conditions. A major innovation was the development of the 'bogie' which is a short 2 axle / 4 wheel (sometimes 3 axle / 6 wheel) unit located at each end of the passenger carriage - these allowed passenger carriages to be much longer than hitherto whilst still being able to negotiate sharply curved tracks. They also gave (give) a significantly smoother quality of 'ride'.

Nowadays most - but not all - passenger trains use bogies. Even in the 1990's British Railways was still building some new 4-wheel carriages, mainly for use on uneconomic services which were threatened with closure. This was done in an effort to keep these lines open in the face of a government that was only interested in how cheaply (and not how well) things could be done. Because of their long wheelbase these trains have been known to have difficulty negotiating sharp curves, which to solve requires special works to the rails by the track maintenance people.

As the railways matured it became usual to vary each train's combination of 1st, 2nd and 3rd class carriages depending on the type of service being provided and passenger demand. For instance: weekday services aimed at the business market would be formed with a higher proportion of 1st class carriages than weekend leisure services. Often the very wealthy would even be able 'hire' a whole carriage just for themselves. Frequently trains would be reformed when calling at intermediate stations, with carriages swapped between trains whilst the passengers remained inside. Some trains also had 'slip' carriages which would be detached from the end of the train on the approach to a station where the train itself would not be stopping. An onboard railwayman would ensure that the slip coach(es) would stop in the station platform and if it was a junction station it (they) might then be added to a local train serving all the stations on that branchline. Especially on branch lines it was also common to operate 'mixed' trains comprising of both passenger carriages and a few freight wagons as this was more cost effective then running individual trains.

All this 'chopping and changing' of train formation was done to make life easier for passengers as it saved them the hassle of changing trains. However, whilst these arrangements worked very well they were very labour, time and rolling stock intensive, and therefore expensive to administer.

Many towns and cities also hosted urban tramway (literally "street railway") systems and generally these used self-propelled electric tramcars although until electricity became the universal choice some places also used horse-drawn trams and / or special 'street' compatible steam engines pulling a rake of tram trailers.

Nowadays

Nowadays the situation is very different, and with train operator's convenience and economy of operation being the primary deciding factors locomotive hauled passenger trains are becoming increasingly rare in Britain - although they are still common overseas. There are also only two classes of travel - 2nd class was abolished in 1956 and more recently 3rd class was officially renamed 'standard' class.

With the exception of special services (such as railway-enthusiast orienteered services) and those on the many heritage / museum lines, modern British passenger trains tend to be formed of semi-permanent fixed rakes of passenger carriages which would only usually be uncoupled when undergoing scheduled maintenance. Frequently there will be special compartments for the train driver at each end of the train as this avoids the cumbersome and time-consuming process of swapping the locomotive from one end of the train to the other at locations where trains must reverse direction (usually but not always terminal stations).

The disadvantage with fixed formation trains is their inflexibility. For instance it is rarely possible to simply add an extra carriage (or two) when passenger demand suggests that a longer train is required. In Britain this issue often leads to over-crowding on routes where there is very variable passenger demand and train operators are more concerned with the (admittedly steep) cost of hiring extra carriages (or trains) for than the needs of passengers to travel in greater comfort.

The image (below) demonstrates a solution adopted in Switzerland - where the railways are run to attract passengers & not just finance banks - which entails adding a few extra carriages at one end of the train. It should be noted however that passengers who use these "add-on" carriages will be unable to access the rest of the train, eg: for the buffet, as well as be beyond the reach of the roving ticket inspectors and the refreshment trolley crew.

Nevertheless, if compatible rolling stock could be found such could act as inspiration for train operators here in Britain too.

The Various Kinds of British Trains

Push-Pull. These trains still use heavy locomotives but usually it stays at one end of the train. The railway vehicle at the other end of the train will feature a drivers' cab so that for 50% of its journeys the locomotive will be pushing the train - instead of pulling it. Depending on the train company and route being served the railway vehicle with the driver's cab will either be a specially modified passenger carriage or what is known as a 'van trailer' - this effectively being a luggage van equipped with a driver's cab.

Double-Ended. These trains have a locomotive unit at each end of the train. Examples of this type of trains include the HST (High Speed Train) and the 186mph / 300km/h 'Eurostar' which links London with Paris and Brussels via the Chunnel.

Distributed Power Trains. Usually called 'Multiple Units' this type of train is becoming increasingly popular with train operators. Instead of using a specialist locomotive several passenger carriages (typically between 2 and 4 but can be any number) are semi-permanently joined together with the various on-train 'services' being spread throughout the length of the train. This makes it possible for almost the entire trains' length to be dedicated for passenger use. However because the individual carriages that form the train are so dependant on each other there is a disadvantage in that if one of them develops a fault then the whole train could become unusable.

At one time diesel 'distributed power' multiple-unit trains would have the engine under only some of the carriages but with many modern designs every carriage is motored and although soundproofing is fitted the noise levels will be similar to those found in a private car. With electric trains both situations are common, depending on the train operators specifications, however even in the carriages which are motored there is a much quieter, smoother ambiance.

Single-vehicle. Usually for the quietest rail routes and urban light rail services a single, self-contained vehicle will form a complete train. Whilst it is often possible for several of these vehicles to be coupled together to form longer trains the essential design criteria remains that these vehicles will be capable of operating as single self-contained vehicles.

In Britain most of our tram systems operated 'single vehicle' services - one of the few exceptions to this was / is the Blackpool - Fleetwood inter-urban line where some motor + trailer sets still survive. This coastal tramway is the only 'first generation' electric street tramway system on the British mainland which survived into the modern era.

All the new systems use articulated trams which are capable of operating as single entities, although with three systems (Manchester Metrolink, Tyne & Wear Metro and London's Docklands Light Railway) multiple unit operation is a design feature - and often occurs.

One of the fundamental differences between light rail and the other forms of rail transport is that whereas the operations of traditional railways are always controlled by signalling systems and for reasons of safety they are (supposed to be) hemmed in by high-security fencing with (except at specified crossing points) general public access to the railway right of way prohibited, with light rail there is also the option of "driving on sight" (especially but not exclusively when travelling on the public highway) and the networks are usually 'open' and at stations passengers will frequently be able to cross the line at track level.

Naming Trains

For many years it has been practise to give railway locomotives names, perhaps to honour people or places they serve.