During 1969, the road-based City Link Transport Services Limited was started by British Rail; the two entities closely collaborated to facilitate door-to-door parcel deliveries.

[2] On 1 April 1963, British Rail established Red Star, an express registered parcel delivery service to compete against the General Post Office.

The concept was also promoted widely by British Rail's own freight sales force, which later helped City Link to become the largest single user of Red Star.

City Link was appointed as the delivery agent with a five-year contract (and a two-year extension) and this eventually led to the downfall of the relationship between the two organisations.

In 1989, following suspicions and allegations that both parties were competing directly with each other, City Link started the transition of moving its parcels from rail to road; one year later, the company declared that it would no longer deliver on behalf of Red Star.

[9][11] The sale was politically controversial at the time; specifically, it was opposed by the Labour Party in part due to the meagre amount of money received by the British government in exchange.

Renamed InterCity RailFreight Ltd, the parcel-carrying services have since expanded onto other franchised passenger train networks including Great Western Railway.

[18][19] During the late 2010s, the rolling stock specialist Rail Operations Group (ROG) had formulated ambitious plans to launch a high speed logistics service under the branding of Orion.

[20] The firm hopes to drive a modal shift from road towards the railway, observing the market for parcels and express delivery to be valued at £16.7 billion alone.

While conventional freight operator have offered the market relatively inflexible timetables, management believe that flexibility and high speeds would positively influence customers.