Crystal balls are fragile things. Consequently, it is with kid gloves that Karl Watts FCIRO, managing director of Railmotive consultancy, is handling his very own oracle. #Railmotive has outlined a possible path for the next ten years of intermodal rail operations in the #UK. The future looks bright, but it also looks … boxy. #railfreight #railfreightnews #railcargonews
James Blackman
4mo
Moving containers on to rail is a no brainer. HS2 was meant to release capacity onto west coast mainline. Taking HGVs off the road would make a massive difference both environmentally and reduce costs. The challenge is can you rail freight from UK to Europe and Asia by rail without transshipments
Ian Hughes
4mo
Excellent future I believe, we now need to sort out the last five miles. Like the integrated system with local depots Freighliner used to run
Technician, Network Rail National Awards nominee 2021 & 2022,National Rail Awards nominee 2022. 34 years + experience on the railway, on break from H&S,helicopter & heavy engineering enthusiast, author and YouTube star
4moFor me, there’s a lot of work to be done on all sides. Intermodal services in the UK are timetabled as Class 4, which means they can run at 60-75 mph, yet they average between 30 & 45 mph (which may explain why a service takes between 8 and 9 hours to get from Cardiff to Felixstowe). I think as a country, we need to look at an integrated system (we all know the environmental benefits of rail, so as in Ian Hughes post above, maybe use electric HGV's for the last 5 miles?), or support more services along the Varamis Rail model, or even Euro Carex using high-very high speed trains carrying cargo