What’s the hurry?

In 2025 the rail industry is celebrating the 200 years since the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, widely accepted as being the first public railway, charging both passengers and freight customers for its use. At the opening ceremony on 27th September 1825, passengers were allowed to ride in coal wagons, a reminder that the line was primarily built to carry freight. Indeed, for some while after the opening ceremony, passenger trains were pulled by horses, and the early locomotives were reserved for hauling freight.

The reported speed of the first train was a mere 15 miles an hour, doubtless impressive for the emerging technology of the time, but it is worth reflecting on progress since then, and how the experience of passenger and freight customers has diverged considerably. Progressive speed records have been achieved with passenger trains as the various railway companies vied with one another to offer faster journeys on competing routes.

Speeds of over 70 miles an hour were becoming commonplace by the 1930s and today main lines offer up to 125 miles an hour, a nine-fold increase since 1825.

Freight, on the other hand, has had a top speed of 75 mph since the 1960s, a mere five-fold improvement on 1825. This is partly due to the aerodynamics of freight trains and the potential risk of turbulence when passing through stations at speed. It is also perhaps the product of a lack of priority given to freight on the network. Why, after all, should it matter? A consignment of freight on a container train has probably spent six weeks or more sailing halfway around the planet before arriving in the UK. What does it matter if it takes a few hours more to travel from one of our deep-sea ports in the south to a terminal in Liverpool, Manchester or Scotland?

The answer lies in how we make the best use of our rail network. As long-distance passenger trains get faster, so they catch up with stopping passenger services and freight, presenting a headache for those charged with drawing up the timetable. Letting the fast train leave first is obvious, but the slower ones soon get caught up by the next fast train as increased service frequency responds to growing travel demand. So, what is the solution? One is to build an entirely new route for faster trains, such as HS2. With hindsight, it may have been a more popular project if it was sold on its capacity rather than speed benefits. If completed in full, it could have released enough space in the timetable for up to 15 extra freight trains on the West Coast Main Line. That is a lot of avoidable lorry miles taken off our congested road network. However, we now have the worst of all worlds – more services on HS2 vying with local and freight services north of Handsacre junction on the West Coast, and planners trying to work out how much needed extra capacity can be found. On a four-track line, it is easy. Put the fast services on one pair of lines and everything else on another. But north of Stafford on the West Coast and north of Doncaster on the East Coast, there are few places where this capacity is available.

Too often, the solution is to find a short section of loop line or siding where a freight train can be parked out of the way until there is another suitable gap in the timetable. With timetables mostly having a repeating pattern throughout the day, freight trains can be held for up to an hour at a time. Even then, we often find that the loop line is not long enough to accommodate a 775m freight train of the loop has been designed for the slower trains of the steam age and the turnouts have speed restrictions.

This all impacts on the cost of running the freight service. The longer it takes to complete the end-to-end journey, the more drivers it takes, as they will need to change shifts along the route. If a train takes a whole day to travel from one end of the country to the other, it is unlikely that its wagons and locomotive will be ready to make the same journey again for 3-4 days once it is loaded and unloaded and returned to its point of origin.

It is this decay in productivity that does little to make rail competitive with road and has exercised the minds of timetable planners to see what might be possible if freight trains were allowed to run a little faster. A speed increase of up to 87mph has been shown to provide enough benefit to reduce the number of stops the train has to make along the route with a saving of up to four hours on the overall journey time. This would be enough to save a shift. If the train can return to its originating depot in two days instead of three or three instead of four, more services can run using the same fleet. These higher speeds rely on having sufficient power supply for freight to use electric locomotives. These achieve better acceleration than diesel and can maintain higher speeds when tackling gradients, such as those on the West Coast Main Line. Modelling has shown that two class 90 locomotives could maintain the required power output, and that the new class 99s could be configured to achieve this without multiple working.

Increasing demand for power on the network will present another challenge, but this should be measured against the greater challenge of charging the batteries for the 8,000 lorries that use the M6 north of Preston every day.

2025 is a significant year for the railway as we look forward to rail reform under Great British Railways. Essential to the government’s missions for growth and decarbonisation will be an enhanced role for rail freight and our industry needs to look to the future with the same appetite for innovation that inspired the pioneers of the past.

By Phil Smart, Assistant Policy Manager, RFG