It promised 15,000 freight train movements in the construction phase. It was going to free up the network for more services – including freight. It would be instrumental in expanding Britain’s economy, allowing fast freight to get back on the crowded West Coast Main Line. Britain’s high-speed HS2 was a heck of a plan. UK Editor for RailFreight.com, Simon Walton, asks: What the heck happened to it?
Not so much as one train has run on HS2. Nor will a high-speed train run for maybe a decade to come. Britain’s huge civil engineering project has been chopped and changed so much that most people have no idea where the high-speed tracks will begin or end. Nevertheless, trains have run on HS2 already. Hundreds of them. Thousands. So far, freight has been the big winner – or has it?
HS2’s freight promise: from 15,000 trains to an uncertain legacy
The original HS2 logistics plan promised nothing short of a new era of construction by rail. 15,000 freight trains over a decade, ten million tonnes shifted, and millions of lorry movements removed from Britain’s roads. With a modicum of creative division, that works out to about 30 trains a week. For a while, HS2 has been delivering, more or less. About four per cent of Britain’s 600 daily freight trains are accounted for by HS2 duties.
Record tonnages and railheads humming across Buckinghamshire and west London have been cause for celebration (without dwelling on opinions in Bucks and west London). However, with the project’s scope slashed, costs spiralling, and timetables slipping, the freight story is no longer so clear. Are we still on track to hit those headline figures? More importantly, will HS2 actually deliver the long-term prize freight operators were promised — more capacity on the existing network?
Building by rail, not road
When the HS2 “Materials by Rail” plan was drawn up, it looked ambitious but achievable. The numbers were eye-catching: 15,000 trains would move ten million tonnes of spoil and aggregate, eliminating 1.5 million heavy goods vehicle journeys. By 2023, HS2 Ltd was even boasting of doubling that total on Phase One alone — 30,000 trains and 20 million tonnes. Then all those tunnels – delivered section by section. The concept proved sound. The Willesden hub in west London was designed for up to eight trains a day, fed by a conveyor to cut lorry trips across suburban streets. Quainton railhead, north of Aylesbury, clocked up over 600 trains in just 16 months.
Then the notorious Betrayal of the North came in October 2023. Phase Two (Manchester) was cancelled, and the grand vision was abruptly cut back to London–Birmingham. That halved the physical railway and inevitably shrank the logistics programme too. Northern railheads were struck off. Ambitions of 30,000 trains evaporated. Are we still on track for that headline of 15,000 freight trains that defined HS2’s build programme? More likely, the story has quietly shifted to a more modest series of flows into London and Buckinghamshire.
Freight capacity: promise versus delivery
The freight sector backed HS2 on the basis that it would take long-distance intercity trains off the West Coast Main Line and release capacity for rail freight, particularly on the southern approaches to London. That was the slice of the £100 billion carrot dangled in front of operators. It was not just fewer trucks during construction, but a permanent gain once the line was open, sometime in the 2030s.
How does that hold up, now that Birmingham becomes the northern terminus? Without Manchester, Leeds or the East Midlands legs, much of the long-distance WCML traffic will stay where it is. For freight, that means the busiest bottleneck — the southern end into London — may look little different after HS2 than it does today. That is not a good outcome.
HS2’s construction by rail has been a rare bright spot in an otherwise troubled project. The Willesden hub and Buckinghamshire railheads prove what rail freight can achieve when given the chance. The lorry reductions are real, and the environmental case is undeniable. Campaigners may have a case over the construction disruption, but without the intervention of rail freight, their lives would be intolerable.
Time to do the sums again
The feasibility is intact. The enabling assets (the Willesden hub, conveyors, established quarry-to-site corridors, proven railheads) are already operating. What changes is the scale and duration of the programme. Fewer total trains over fewer years, focused on Phase One. If HS2 updates its targets to match the reduced scope, rail can still do exactly what it was chosen for—deliver high-volume materials reliably while keeping tens of thousands of trucks off the roads where the project actually lives.
Yet the legacy remains uncertain. If the full complement of 15,000 trains is never reached, then the project will fall short of its own promises. If capacity for freight is not tangibly freed up on the West Coast Main Line, already Europe’s busiest mixed-traffic route, then the sector may reasonably ask: after all the disruption, was it worth it? Right now, the answer to that question is uncertain.