Despite all that press coverage, Britain’s high speed rail project is still very much alive. It has been radically scaled down from a grand plan for a national network. However, work is underway on the core section between London and Birmingham. That’s good news for rail freight which remains the biggest supporter of the line.
Rail freight continues to play a mission critical role for the HS2 high speed rail project in Britain. In a monthly update hosted by the recently appointed new chief executive, Mark Wild revealed the extent of operations. It can be seen, albeit briefly, in some aerial shots of the project’s London logistics hub at Willesden, near the Old Oak Common station site.
Sharing the load
It was only a few months ago that one rail freight operator, DB Cargo, celebrated moving over one million tonnes of materials to HS2 construction sites. That milestone was achieved over eighteen months, with 583 trains delivering aggregate to three locations around Calvert and Aylesbury. The firm says that replaced over 100,000 heavy goods vehicles on the roads of Britain.
By some estimates, figures like that make HS2 the single biggest customer of the UK rail freight sector. All the major operators are involved. There’s a slice of the high speed pie being shared around to everyone – not out of generosity, but because of necessity. The scale of works on the 140-mile (224km) line is such that no one operator can service all the needs of the project.
Relative values
Loads include aggregates and building materials inward, along with significant shipments of prefabricated sections for tunnels, bridges and linings. Spoil has been on the way out, and later, track sections will be delivered by rail too. The mix of goods at logistics hubs may change over time, but the intensity of services will remain constant.
Much has been made of the inexorable expense of building HS2. Despite the project’s lofty ambitions having been radically reduced (to a core London-Birmingham shuttle) the real cost has remained around the psychological one hundred billion pound mark (€117bn). However, it should not be overlooked that much of that money is finding its way back into the UK economy, not least supporting the 31,000 engineers working on the line. In context, the entire project is about the same cost as the UK spends on health services in less than a year, or about as much money as the US burns through for its military budget every three weeks.
Ten thousand trains are still required
Two years ago, the optimistic target for 2030, set by HS2, required the project to take up to 1.5 million lorries off the roads, with up to 15,000 freight trains planned to haul ten million tonnes of aggregate to and from sites. This however was before the radical scaling back of the project, and the controversial cancellation of the northern leg to Manchester. Even so, one thousand trains have already served the constriction site at Quainton in Buckinghamshire, another rail freight milestone, celebrated just last month in February.
The exact number of freight trains still required for the project is not known. However, the Manchester leg (about 80 miles or 128km) represents about one-third of the overall length of the line. A reasonable estimate would still require ten thousand trains during the construction phase. HS2 revised its figures upwards, saying it may take twice as many train loads as originally planned.