Intermodal railfreight in Great Britain
Initially started by British Rail in the 1960s, the use of containers that could be swapped between different modes of transport goes back to the days of the London, Midland & Scottish Railway.
The transport of containers from ship to rail is classified by the UK government as Lo-Lo traffic (lift-on, lift-off).
As a transfer container service, Freightliner was set up by British Rail as a separate company, with the first train running in November 1965.
[3] The idea of trains moving containers pre-dated the Beeching cuts, with some suggestions being put forward in the 1950s when the railway was under the control of the British Transport Commission.
[7] Initially, the new Freightliner service was intended for the domestic movement of freight in containers between points in the Great Britain, with 16 terminals in operation in 1968, and Southampton and Tilbury under construction.
[11] In 1969, British Rail transferred ownership of Freightliner to the National Freight Corporation, but with BR supplying the wagons and locomotives.
British Rail deemed it more efficient to load containers at Coatbridge in Glasgow, and use electric traction south on the West Coast Main Line.
These were separated into sites away from the main railfreight business as operated between UK terminals and deep-sea ports such as Southampton and Felixstowe.
[23] The opening of Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT) in July 1997, heralded another new venture into the intermodal business.
[24] In 1997, services through the Channel Tunnel operated between Birmingham Landor Street, Daventry, Mossend, Seaforth, Trafford Park, Wakefield and Willesden in the United Kingdom, with terminals in Europe (Avignon, Barcelona, Lyon, Melzo, Metz, Muizen, Novara, Oleggio, Paris, Perpignan, Rogoredo and Turin).
[33] Most binliners would run as block trains, but occasional special traffics would be railed to its final destination via the wagonload network, such as spent shot blast from Falmouth to Brindle Heath in Greater Manchester.
The main sites were at Forders in Bedfordshire, Calvert in Buckinghamshire, Appleford in Oxfordshire, Roxby Gullet in Lincolnshire and Appley Bridge in Greater Manchester.
[41] Many containers are transferred between ports in Britain by water transport, mostly at sea using coastal shipping, but some on the canal or river systems.
[44] A similar service operates between Tees Dock and Doncaster iPort, which has an out and back run of only 200 miles (320 km), and as such, the train and locomotive can be utilised twice in one day, making greater use of the resources.
However, its ability to deliver containers the short distance and avoid the congested M8, M80, M876 and M9 motorways, meant that it afforded customers a better transit time.
After the Ordsall Chord opened in West Manchester, more trains were diverted to go through this bottleneck causing delays and cancellations, with Network Rail going so far as to label the 1-mile (1.6 km) stretch of line as "congested infrastructure".
Another proposal, put forward by Railfuture, is to relocate the Manchester intermodal terminals on the old Carrington Branch, and therefore freeing up paths through Castlefield for passenger trains, or to add flex to the operational capacity of the corridor.
[18][150] DIRFT, which opened in 1997, had ten departures daily operated by Freightliner, DB Cargo (previously EWS), and Direct Rail Services.
