Britain is just a few weeks away from appointing a new prime minister. If Andy Burnham does take residence in Downing Street, the rail industry will be watching closely. Few incoming leaders have arrived with such a clearly articulated transport agenda, one that places infrastructure, regional growth and industrial strategy at its heart. RailFreight.com UK Editor Simon Walton has, once again, been stalking the corridors of power.
For rail freight, the implications could be considerable. A revived Birmingham-Manchester railway signals a new approach to regional investment. A programme of reindustrialisation has potential considerations for freight flows and network capacity. However, none of this is certain. Political ambition and freight reality do not always travel on the same track. Burnham’s vision may represent a new era for rail freight, but industry risks being carried along by a short-formed train of political optimism.
New railway, not necessarily the old HS2
Burnham’s most significant rail commitment is the reinstatement of the cancelled northern leg of HS2 between Birmingham and Manchester. The proposal being discussed is a redesigned and potentially lower-cost scheme, often described as the Midlands–North West Rail Link. The emphasis has shifted from maximum speed to maximum capacity on the increasingly misnamed High Speed 2.
The argument is that the imprecise concept of “The North” does not necessarily need another railway, marketed around saving minutes from journey times. It needs additional capacity to support economic growth, improve resilience and allow existing routes to work more effectively. That distinction matters greatly for rail freight.
Freight trains will not run on HS2 itself (caveat: don’t bet the house on that). The benefit comes from moving fast inter-city passenger services onto a new route and releasing space on the existing West Coast Main Line – already Europe’s busiest mixed-traffic route. Additional capacity could provide more reliable paths, fewer conflicts between passenger and freight services, and greater opportunity for future growth.
Freight demand driven by rail?
Before any long-term capacity benefits arrive, a Birmingham–Manchester railway would itself become a significant freight opportunity. The original HS2 project demonstrated how major infrastructure schemes can generate rail freight activity. Aggregates, ballast, cement, steel and construction materials all require movement in substantial volumes. A northern extension would provide similar opportunities.
Temporary railheads and existing terminals could support the movement of materials, reducing pressure on local roads and limiting thousands of additional HGV journeys. There would also be opportunities for removing excavated material, particularly if the final route requires significant earthworks or tunnelling. Andy’s Altrincham Abyss, perhaps? The longer-term benefits could extend beyond construction, but the challenge is always that some of those newly liberated paths do not disappear into another round of passenger timetable expansion.
Reindustrialisation: opportunity or nostalgia?
The wider context is Burnham’s ambition to reindustrialise Britain. It featured high in his policy speech at Manchester’s People’s History Museum in April. Burnham outlined a vision based around stronger regional economic powers, industrial strategy and rebuilding domestic capability in areas including steel, defence, energy and manufacturing. That’s a clear clarion call for rail freight, but the economy of the future will not necessarily resemble the people’s economy of the past.
For example, even the hot topic of the day – a significant expansion of defence manufacturing – is unlikely to recreate the freight volumes generated by the coalfields, steelworks and heavy industries of previous generations. Modern defence production is typically high-value and lower-volume. A missile factory does not generate the same logistics profile as a power station or integrated steelworks. The strongest freight opportunities from reindustrialisation are likely to come indirectly.
New nuclear facilities, renewable energy projects, battery plants, housing programmes and infrastructure investment all require enormous quantities of steel, aggregates, cement and construction materials. That is where rail freight can play a major role. The future may not be about recreating the industrial railway. It may be about supporting a modern economy that still needs to move large volumes of essential materials. More intermodal trains, then.
Parkside, Old Trafford and the Manchesterism of freight
Nowhere illustrates this better than Greater Manchester. The proposed Parkside East Strategic Rail Freight Interchange, near Newton-le-Willows, has long been seen as a potential solution to the region’s future logistics needs. The irony is that the site sits within what is now Burnham’s Westminster constituency of Makerfield. If Freightliner’s Old Trafford terminal eventually relocates to Parkside, the prime minister would have a significant rail freight asset sitting firmly on his constituency doorstep. That would be quite a turnaround for a politician sometimes portrayed as being less than enthusiastic about freight.
That portrayal, however, probably owes more to individual comments than overall policy. Burnham has criticised freight trains competing with passenger services on congested routes, particularly around Manchester’s Castlefield corridor. His argument has been that the current network forces passenger and freight operators into unnecessary competition. That is very different from being anti-freight. Indeed, he has previously argued that freight cannot move effectively across the North because there is insufficient capacity.
The solution, in his view, is more railway, not less freight. There is also a small matter of unfinished business. Burnham declined the opportunity to address our own UK Railfreight Summit at MediaCityUK in 2020, despite it being only a few Bee Network tram stops from his mayoral office. With the almost certain move to Westminster’s top office, the invitation may be worth sending again. After all, the journey from Mayor of Greater Manchester to champion of northern rail freight is not exactly a long-distance service.
Great Burnham Railways
The rail industry should therefore watch carefully, but without losing its critical eye. Freight is not being left out of the nationalisation programme, and a Burnham administration could create significant opportunities for rail freight. A revived HS2 successor, released West Coast Main Line capacity, Parkside development and a more interventionist industrial policy could all strengthen the sector. However, political vision must eventually translate into freight volumes, investment decisions and operational reality. The danger is that “reindustrialisation” becomes a nostalgic slogan rather than a practical economic programme.
The opportunity is that infrastructure investment creates the conditions for new industries, new logistics flows and a more balanced transport network. For rail freight, the most important question is not whether Britain can recreate the past. It is whether it can build the capacity needed for the future. All this may come to pass, or there may be a volte face before any of it is implemented. Changing tracks has become as British as an afternoon cup of tea. As is often reported in the corridors of power, Britain is just a few weeks away from appointing a new prime minister.