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Jul 08 2022

What does the East Coast digitisation mean for UK freight

The announcement that the East Coast Main Line will benefit from a significant digital upgrading has caught the imagination of the rail industry at large. There is a genuine belief that the twenty-first-century signalling system will enhance the line’s capacity and significantly improve the UK network overall.

However, there are still those who remember the budget electrification of the line in the 1970s and the decades of rectification work that have been needed ever since. Therefore there is a degree of scepticism that the project will be delivered for the one billion pound budget (1,3 billion euro) and will all sectors benefit equally – including rail freight.

 

Deltics and coal

It has been a long time since Deltics and coal dominated the ECML. The thunderous diesels were, at the time, the most powerful locomotives on the UK network, as they hauled twelve-coach Anglo-Scottish services at 100 miles per hour (160kph) along the 400 miles (640km) between London and Edinburgh. They weaved past heavy mineral trains emanating from the coalfields of Yorkshire and Northumberland, which rarely achieved half that speed.

 

The pattern has changed significantly since then. Passenger trains are faster and more frequent and its slower inter-urban and commuter services that weave between the expresses. Freight comes in boxes doing 75mph (120kph). The mineral traffic is bound for the building sites, not London’s closed coal-fired power stations. Does this new signalling project address those challenges? Well, in part, yes, but in part no. Read more

 

Source: RAILFREIGHT.COM