Network Rail has laid out a £10M plan it hopes will unlock the capacity for freight trains travelling through the Channel Tunnel to be able to directly join the UK network to London.
The freight loading gauge of much the UK’s network has remained the same since the 90s, but now the European standard for load units and swap bodies (standard freight containers) is marginally bigger. This stops a lot of rail freight travelling through the Channel Tunnel as the only route to London which has a necessary gauge is High Speed 1 (HS1) from Folkestone to St Pancras International.
To combat this, Network Rail has devised a plan to convert the Channel Tunnel “classic route” – Folkestone to Wembley via Ashford and Maidstone – to be able to support the bigger load units and swap bodies, freight gauge W9a, with minimal intervention.
Network Rail head of freight development Guy Bates said: “There’s a vast swathe of continental intermodal traffic that cannot pass over our classic route at the moment and so therefore either travels on HS1 or actually just goes short sea [down the Thames Estuary] across to Purfleet or Tilbury and completely misses the through tunnel rail opportunity. GetLink who are the owning group of the Channel Tunnel are understandably frustrated that the classic route from Dollands Moor to Wembley has stood still since the early 90s and is unable to cater for now commonplace continental intermodal kit.”
Most of the East Coast Main Line up to the Scottish border, bits of the West Coast Main Line and parts of the Great Western Main Line are cleared to gauge W12, a more recently implemented gauge, but Bates stated that for roughly the last 20 years it has been Network Rail’s ambition to rebuild everything with that loading gauge.
Network Rail’s proposal to for converting the “classic route” – which for freight trains starts at Dollands Moor freight yard, next to Folkestone – has arisen from the freight team’s attention to detail. “We’ve gone through the modelling of the wagon and box combinations through different structures with a fine-toothed comb and we’ve come up with a scheme,” Bates said.
It will be realised through a mixture of track lowering, slight alterations to some structures and imposing speed restrictions in certain areas. “In short, we will address two or three structures,” Bates said. “We’ll pair them to W12 because if you’re going to dig a bridge up, you do it once properly.” Light track works will also be required. “The rest of it is largely down to some slightly more intelligent tamping through south London station where some of the track is quite elevated in places, so bringing that back down to get the gauge clearance,” he said.
The route will be spacious enough to accommodate freight wagons, but there will need to be speed restrictions on some structures that don’t have standard clearance, Bates explained. “If you run at a slightly reduced speed that’s okay,” he said. “The thing fits through, it doesn’t bounce around so much.”
Network Rail hopes to have the route adjusted to W9a gauge completed and carrying freight by the end of Control Period 7, 2024-2029. It is estimated to cost £10M. However, this is just a starting point for Network Rail. There are two other routes from Folkestone to London, a west Kent route via Tonbridge and Redhill and a separate Kent route via Tonbridge and Sevenoaks, but both would require significant interventions to infrastructure along the way to convert the lines to W12 gauge. Bates admits that it is unlikely the Treasury will agree to fund all the required works.
On the Redhill and Sevenoaks routes, if Network Rail was to convert it to W12 for instance “the overbridge at Tonbridge Station spans all of the track and it’s the wrong height and too narrow so that would need rebuilding,” Bates said. “On the all routes, if you set off out of Dollands Moore, you immediately go through Saltwood tunnel [which is incompatible]. If you’re going to go to W12, you have got to rebuild the whole tunnel which is a big undertaking because it’s a big old tunnel.”
Network Rail is fully aware that the English Channel rail freight market will never be fully unlocked without a full conversion of the UK’s network to W12, but Bates stated the plan to convert the “classic route” to W9a gets the ball rolling. Bates said: “This W9a scheme starts to move the game forward rather than simply holding out for a massive big bang fund, it gets something happening and proves the market. If we do this modest intervention, get some actual traffic rolling, you can then start to make a case of the bigger investment of things.”
Last June, the Department for Transport published its Future of Freight: a long-term plan, which included a pledge to identify a multi-modal National Freight Network around the UK. Great British Railways has also set out potential actions and activities to grow rail freight as part of the overhaul of the nation’s rail sector.