UK Rail Freight levels at the Ports?

Reading several threads on prototype diesels on RMWeb.co.uk (in particular this long thread about Class 60 heavy haul locomotives), I get the sense that rail freight in the UK cratered a few years back, but I couldn't tell whether they meant all freight haulers (which sucks all around), or just EWS/Schenker (which is better in that it means freight hasn't left the rails, just that Freightliner, GB Freight, DRS are simply eating EWS/Schenker's lunch and it sucks to be them).
That aside, I decided to do a careful, scientific analysis of UK ports which consisted of zooming in on Southhampton, Tilsbury, Felixstowe, and I was kind of surprized that the rail action seemed quite underwhelming - (then again, I am used to Port Newark et.al).
I keep reading that intermodal was to be the savior of UK rail freight, well this wasn't so confidence inspiring, So, from our UK correspondants, did I simply pick the wrong ports to view? Are there larger container ports? Are the intermodal trains turned and loaded so quickly that big yard facilities aren't needed? And what of other port (non-intermodal) rail freight traffic?
Thanks

Quite a lot is being spent on clearing routes from Southampton to the North, and from Felixstowe - raising bridges and tunnels to accommodate larger containers. Whenever I go past Southampton there seems to be plenty of container trains, and on the route up to London there are always freight trains passing on the route to Basingstoke where they turn off for Reading and the Great West mainline. The Southampton tunnel was enlarged about 25 years ago, and was enlarged again last year.

I gather that freight is doing better here than in many other European countries.

Eurotunnel has bought a freight company to try to build up cross channel rail freight and link with Europorte 2 which operates in France and other countries.

Freight companies complain that it is difficult to get slots, but I see in the current Rail magazine that networkRail is planning freight by-passes to the East Coast line via Lincoln, for example. There is investment going on.

I wish the government hadn't failed to support the Central Rail line which would have brought UIC gauge freight to the North, using the former Great Central route and new build round the M25 motorway to the Tunnel. The promoters claimed they wouldn't have needed any public money.

One problem is the closure of most of the coal industry, compensated slightly by the imports of coal.
UIC freight can now reach London and a distribution depot may be built in the Dagenham area (north of the Thames).

From a railway magazine article i read a few years ago , describing a Southhampton to Birmingham conatiner journey , its pretty much off the ship , onto a relatively short container train , and away within hours of the ship arriving .
So , a big yard is probably not necessary .

David Benton wrote:From a railway magazine article i read a few years ago , describing a Southhampton to Birmingham container journey , it's pretty much off the ship , onto a relatively short container train , and away within hours of the ship arriving .
So , a big yard is probably not necessary .

The problem is larger containers and a constricted loading gauge. The investment going on is to address that. The tunnel just east of Southampton Central station was the main bottleneck. It has now had two periods of major work. In 1985 they were rebuilding it under BR. (I know because in 1985 I was on a train from Bournemouth on the way to Heathrow and the train was delayed by the tunnel work and I missed my plane to Saudi.) The main work is to lower the track to increase available height. I think it's finished now. Probably the same kind of work has been done at the Micheldelver tunnels. I think there are no other tunnels between Southampton and Birmingham.

These trains take a huge number of lorries off the roads.

Thanks for the responses so far.

george matthews wrote:I wish the government hadn't failed to support the Central Rail line which would have brought UIC gauge freight to the North, using the former Great Central route and new build round the M25 motorway to the Tunnel. The promoters claimed they wouldn't have needed any public money.

What happened to this proposal, then - I can't seem to find mention anymore via google (I know I found the main website last year via google).

describing a Southhampton to Birmingham container journey , its pretty much off the ship , onto a relatively short container train , and away within hours of the ship arriving . So , a big yard is probably not necessary .

That's cool then, fast turnaround is something I don't feel the North American roads do particularly well (although they claim too), even with on-dock-rail facilities (current buzzword) for container transfers.

BTW, how is EWS/Schenker fairing against the competition (DRS, Freightliner, et. al.)? Are they getting clobbered as it's implied on various websites?

BTW, how is EWS/Schenker fairing against the competition (DRS, Freightliner, et. al.)? Are they getting clobbered as it's implied on various websites?

I really don't know. I hope they will develop the cross-channel freight, in competition with Eurotunnel's own company GBRF.
Freight in Britain is very different from freight in the US. Trains are short, for example. Only the really long distance stuff is likely to survive.

george matthews wrote:I wish the government hadn't failed to support the Central Rail line which would have brought UIC gauge freight to the North, using the former Great Central route and new build round the M25 motorway to the Tunnel. The promoters claimed they wouldn't have needed any public money.

What happened to this proposal, then - I can't seem to find mention anymore via google (I know I found the main website last year via google).

I think the project has been dropped. I remember hearing John Prescott give an excellent lecture on it at the Labour Party conference in 1993 (Labour was in opposition then). But when they came to power in 1997 they didn't support it. The structure of the railways now makes it difficult to promote such an idea.
Physically it would be possible. The most difficult bit would be to build round the M25 orbital motorway from Oxfordshire to Kent. Otherwise most of it could follow the existing Great Central tracks and unused right of way.

Here is a web page.http://www.central-railway.co.uk/
It seems to still exist but I have no idea what chance there is of the project being actively revived.
The current proposal seems much more modest than the 1993 project.

The company is now revising its proposals in a number of ways so as to increase the lorry traffic attracted onto its proposed semi-trailers shuttles. A revised proposal would also make easier for other rail freight operators to use the route on the Continent and in Britain. On the Continent the company wishes to develop extensions of its scheme towards Antwerp and Germany, and further into northern France. A link towards Germany would both attract more lorries onto Central Railway lorry shuttles and permit special wagons carrying lorry trailers from Britain to run far into Germany and central Europe. In the UK Central Railway's earlier 2000-2004 route and route alternatives between Liverpool and Buckinghamshire remain but alternative routes running on existing lines in London and Kent, and separately northwards towards Scotland, are being developed. The former is currently expected to replace Central Railway's earlier proposals around the southwest quadrant of London's M25 orbital motorway.

With no electrification (a big mistake I think) there could be no high speed passenger services.

george matthews wrote:Here is a web page.http://www.central-railway.co.uk/ It seems to still exist but I have no idea what chance there is of the project being actively revived.

Yeah, that's the website I saw last year - not sure why I couldn't find it again (bad search terms I guess). The site judging by the Press release section seems mired in 2006, so the project seems definitely on hold for at least the past 4 years.

With no electrification (a big mistake I think) there could be no high speed passenger services.

Reading the website, it seems that was the whole point of the project - a freight only line dedicated to TOFC and COFC. Interesting that the plan stressed TOFC over COFC, as in North America container traffic is stressed over trailer traffic - and I know of no comparable truck/lorry traffic as what is done is Switzerland (or even the Chunnel shuttles, where whole truck-tractor & trailers are carried - in North America trailers alone are carried almost exclusively, to be handled by truck-tractors waiting for them at the TOFC terminals.
Interesting that the Central Railway was planned to support double stack clearances, now that would have been a sight to see roaring through the English countryside - kilometer+ long double stacks trains, you'd think you were in NY or Pennsylvania or something!

Sir Ray wrote:

george matthews wrote:Here is a web page.http://www.central-railway.co.uk/ It seems to still exist but I have no idea what chance there is of the project being actively revived.

Yeah, that's the website I saw last year - not sure why I couldn't find it again (bad search terms I guess). The site judging by the Press release section seems mired in 2006, so the project seems definitely on hold for at least the past 4 years.

With no electrification (a big mistake I think) there could be no high speed passenger services.

Reading the website, it seems that was the whole point of the project - a freight only line dedicated to TOFC and COFC. Interesting that the plan stressed TOFC over COFC, as in North America container traffic is stressed over trailer traffic - and I know of no comparable truck/lorry traffic as what is done is Switzerland (or even the Chunnel shuttles, where whole truck-tractor & trailers are carried - in North America trailers alone are carried almost exclusively, to be handled by truck-tractors waiting for them at the TOFC terminals.
Interesting that the Central Railway was planned to support double stack clearances, now that would have been a sight to see roaring through the English countryside - kilometer+ long double stacks trains, you'd think you were in NY or Pennsylvania or something!

I think the cut down version is much less interesting. I don't believe this double stacking will take off anywhere in western Europe. I suppose Russia might.