Rail freight in Great Britain

Horse-drawn lines were increasingly common by the 18th and early 19th centuries, chiefly to haul bulk materials from mines to canal wharves or areas of consumption.

Steam powered rail freight operated regularly on the Middleton Railway, near Leeds, long before any passenger services.

The LMR was originally intended to carry goods[7] between the Port of Liverpool and east Lancashire, although it subsequently developed as mixed passenger-goods railway.

The Post Office began using letter-sorting carriages in 1838, and the railway quickly proved to be a much quicker and more efficient means of transport than the old mail coaches.

[9] Indeed, thousands of tonnes of munitions and supplies were distributed from all over Great Britain to ports in the South East of England for shipping to France and the Front Line.

Due to pre-war inefficiencies in the rail goods transport, a number of economisation programmes were needed to allow the railways to meet with the huge demand that was being put on their services.

The success of such schemes was entirely down to the collaboration of more than 100 railway companies, who abandoned the fierce competition of the pre-war years to work together in the national interest.

During the early stages of the war, goods trains ran to rural stations in Norfolk to enable airfields to be constructed.

Under the 1955 British Rail Modernisation Plan, massive investment was made in marshalling yards at a time when the use of small wagon load traffic with which they dealt was in steep decline.

Railway freight services had been in steady decline since the 1930s, initially because of the loss of the manufacturing industry and then road haulage's cost advantage in combination with higher wages.

[13] The Beeching cuts included a reduction in freight services, especially the marshalling yards, to concentrate on long distance bulk transport.

[7] In contrast to passenger services, they greatly modernised the goods sector, replacing inefficient wagons with containerised regional hubs.

[6] In 1986, quarrying company Foster Yeoman prompted a turnaround in the reliability of rail freight by obtaining permission to run its own locomotives, and importing the first four EMD class 59s.

When British Rail was privatised in the 1990s, six freight operating companies (FOCs) were set up: The opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994 allowed direct goods trains to run between the UK and the continent for the first time.

[10][20] Major road haulage operations such as the Stobart Group and WH Malcolm move goods by rail, hauling supplies for Asda and Tesco.

A symbolic loss to the rail freight industry in Great Britain was the custom of the Royal Mail, which from 2004 discontinued use of its 49-train fleet, switching to road haulage after a near 170-year preference for trains.

[28] Recent growth is partly due to more international services including the Channel Tunnel and Port of Felixstowe, which is containerised.

Three Class 37 locomotives hauling a coal train on the Rhymney Line in 1997
Mass of freight carried by rail in the UK from 1983 to 2021 (annual rolling average). There was a large decrease in coal carried in 1984–5 due to the miners' strike . [ 1 ]
Rail freight moved in the UK from 1983 to 2019, in terms of mass-distance per year [ 2 ]
A goods train hauled by an LNWR Class C locomotive, passing through Crewe in 1907
A pre- World War II LMS Fowler Class 4F steam locomotive hauling a mixed freight train at Carnforth in 1964
Tinsley Marshalling Yard (pictured here in 1982) was one of several large yards which never handled the large volumes of freight required to make them economical. The yard is now closed but a new cargo terminal opened nearby in 2011.
An example of intermodal freight: a Freightliner Class 90 at Stratford, hauling an intermodal train from Crewe to Felixstowe
The rail access to the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT), a major intermodal terminal
An example of trainload goods: a Freightliner Class 66 hauling empty cement tanks
Tesco "Less CO 2 " intermodal containers at Rugby Yard
Wagons transporting Honda cars at Bristol Temple Meads , 2006