Railtalk
On the face of it, there are few reasons to be cheerful. King Coal, the mainstay of the railways since their inception, has been dethroned and all but left the stage. On several days in 2016, none of the UK’s electricity was generated by coal – wind and solar is now more important than the black stuff in summer. There are only four coal-fired power stations left, and by 2023 all will be gone.
In a fascinating presentation at the Railtex show, Julian Worth, Chair of the Rail Freight Forum at the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, reported that coal is 64% down year-on-year. Metals, too, are not looking that healthy: they are 15% down year-on-year. Tata, inheritor of what is left of the old nationalised steel industry, is in the process of disengaging, having sold its speciality steels already and aiming to transfer the Port Talbot blast furnaces and other rump operations to ThyssenKrupp of Germany.
These two traditional mainstays of the rail freight market, coal and steel, are down to less than 10% apiece of the UK total today. Yet despite those tumbling tonnages, overall rail freight carryings are not doing too badly – just 4% down. ‘The coal decline is not the end of rail freight!’ Mr Worth told his audience.
The reason is that other traffics have come in to replace these old staples. Aggregates traffic, negligible in 1970, is now over a quarter of the total, as sand and gravel supplies in London and the South East have become exhausted and the capital satisfies its voracious demand for building materials from further afield. Francis Paonessa, Network Rail’s Managing Director – Infrastructure Projects, told the Modern Railways Fourth Friday Club’s Rail in the North conference that 40% of the materials used in London buildings are now brought in by rail.…
