Dover–Dunkerque train ferry

This ran a significant cost of finance, time and also was detrimental in the amount of labour required to handle the transhipment.

[2] During the First World War, despite many innovative efforts to get military supplies to the front (such as small barges sailing across the Channel), the British military established a train ferry at Richborough to enable trains and wagons to be taken onto a ferry without having to transfer the goods from wagons.

This allowed loading and unloading of the ferry whatever the water level as the linkspan was adaptable for the height variances of the tide.

[15] Loading and unloading at both terminals was undertaken with two locomotives each drawing a train of railway wagons on or off at the same time.

Traffic imported into Dover via the train ferry included, fruit, chemicals and nuclear fuels between the continent and the BNFL complex at Sellafield.

[18] Exports included china clay from the south west of England to Switzerland and steel products from Teesside to France and Spain.

[19] Total tonnage of freight carried between Germany, France, Spain and the United Kingdom in 1993 was almost 706,000 tonnes (778,000 tons).

[28] Part of the reason for the lower tonnages was down to uncertainty with illegal immigrants,[29] but also crucially, the dangerous goods that the train ferry carried were banned from travelling through the tunnel, so these loads were lost to road transport.

The triplets were then renamed, ditching the Maersk prefix and gaining the Seaways suffix, alongside being repainted into DFDS' house livery.