Could the UK Rail System cope with mail and parcels?

[DarloRich]

The other issue is, who will handle the parcels? In The 80s a booking clerk would often ask me to give a parcel to the guard of the train I was catching and vice versa - who would handle it now? Not very practical on a DOO train with minimal or part time station staff.

I cant imagine parcels or mail would ever be handled at stations

 

[Greenback]

As a concept why should pre-sorted and packed mail not be carried on the railways like any other containerised product between a fairly limited number of regional handling hubs and a point? The days of sporting mail on the move are gone. It just doesn’t seem an efficient use of resources in the 21st centaury.

The issues would be network access, available train paths, rolling stock and reliability. Could the railway make a case to support next day delivery options?

Technology has definitely seen the end of the TPO concept. You don't now have to be anywhere the actual items to be able to sort the majority of mail electronically.

But I don't see any reasons other than cost and speed on some flows, for pre sorted and pre packed mail not to be transported from one secure handling facility to another.

Sadly, the issues of cost and speed are pretty big ones.
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I cant imagine parcels or mail would ever be handled at stations

No, those days are gone too.

 

[CallySleeper]

Just imagine for a moment a proactive government decision to direct mail and parcels carriers to use rail instead of road / air wherever possible.

Imagine maybe, but in reality I'm not sure the government could do that.

I think there is scope for the bulk movement of mail by rail between main hubs. I'm thinking Glasgow/Newcastle/Doncaster/Bristol/Cardiff to/from London. But that would only be the movement of bulk mail I can't see travelling post offices ever returning as the Royal Mail move to very large automatic sorting centres.

I don't think there is scope, sorry.

Firstly, you're assuming that the majority of mail traffic exists on routes to/from London, whereas yes London is the capital, but this isn't really the case.

Also, the railways are to a degree inflexible and unreliable. There's too many variables of things that could delay the mail; for example bad weather, infrastructure issues, engineering work. Since the majority of bulk mail movement occurs in the evening and night you generally couldn't really argue pathing was an issue.

In reality, the majority of long distance domestic mail is processed by air, over a route network centred on EMA. Being equipped with cat IIIB ILS means that aircraft are unlikely to be affected by poor weather conditions. With flights to all corners of the UK (except London) it's the only real option of getting a letter or parcel from the south-west, say to NI or Scotland overnight. How would you do that by rail? It would eventually get there, but not in the time-frame expected or achievable by flying.

Also with EMA being next to the M1 means it's very accessible to/from London itself, though there are some direct flights for example from the likes of Belfast and Edinburgh (and Exeter I think) to Stansted.

 

[Greenback]

It's true that rail works best for bulk flows, so it could only be considered for city to city flows within a certain geographical limit.

Since the 1980's whether correctly or not, rail has been regarded as less reliable than air, at least by the decision makers in Royal Mail.

 

[CallySleeper]

It's true that rail works best for bulk flows, so it could only be considered for city to city flows within a certain geographical limit.

Why?.

 

[Greenback]

Why?.

Because the constrains of speed and cost combine to make it a complete non starter for other flows.

It may have a chance of being competitive for, say, Bristol to Birmingham, but not for Bristol to Southampton.

Even then rail may lose out to road or air, it just hasn't got a chance at ll of being competitive for something like Norwich to Truro (if there is still a mail centre there) or Plymouth.

Edit: Sorry, I see now why you asked. I didn't mean to use the word best to indicate that rail was the best option, more that it would be more competitive with other modes!

 

[BantamMenace]

Would the best solution not be a timetabled core network of intermodal services that slots could be booked on in advance. I can see this appealing to parcel firms, Internet retailers and supermarkets.
Twice daily services such as:
London to Scotland.
London to South west via Bristol.
London to Swansea via Cardiff.
London to North east with a stop in Yorkshire.
London to North west with a stop in Manchester.
South west to Scotland via the Midlands, Yorkshire and North East.

This requires container handling facilities in say Coatbridge, Daventry, Doncaster/Stourton and Trafford Park all of which I know exist. As well as Bristol, Cardiff, Swansea, the Preston/Wigan area and Tyne/Wear/Tees area which I'm unsure about their current existence. Frinally a hub somewhere convenient to London that offers access north and westbound, somewhere in the Old Oak Common would be nice if room is left after HS2.

Services should be able to do an out and back trip in a 24 hour period once loading/unloading times are accounted for.

I would wonder how long such a network would take to become profitable and how supermarkets and couriers especially would take to investing in curtain-sided swap bodies such as Tesco/Stobarts.

 

[Greenback]

Speaking of Swansea in particular, the location of the mail centre is next to the main line, but it would be costly to install container handling facilities there even if space to do so were available, which I'm not sure about.

Anywhere else and the time penalty of transporting the mail to and from the centre by road would work against rail in terms of speed. So I think it's anon starter, really.

 

[starrymarkb]

Two Royal Mail 737s leave Exeter Airport each evening with mail from the SW around 23:30, one for Stansted and one for East Midlands.

They are usually arriving back at around 3am so mail can be in the far SW by about 6am.

 

[RichmondCommu]

Two Royal Mail 737s leave Exeter Airport each evening with mail from the SW around 23:30, one for Stansted and one for East Midlands.

They are usually arriving back at around 3am so mail can be in the far SW by about 6am.

Lets face it the railway network could never compete with that. Even the French postal TGV's have now stopped running, although I don't think they ever used the LGV routes as they are closed at night for maintenance.

 

[CallySleeper]

Two Royal Mail 737s leave Exeter Airport each evening with mail from the SW around 23:30, one for Stansted and one for East Midlands.

They are usually arriving back at around 3am so mail can be in the far SW by about 6am.

Yes Truro/Exeter leaves EMA around 2am I think. I understand Exeter - Stansted service is due a new contract, has that been renewed yet?

Because the constrains of speed and cost combine to make it a complete non starter for other flows.

It may have a chance of being competitive for, say, Bristol to Birmingham, but not for Bristol to Southampton.

Even then rail may lose out to road or air, it just hasn't got a chance at ll of being competitive for something like Norwich to Truro (if there is still a mail centre there) or Plymouth.

Edit: Sorry, I see now why you asked. I didn't mean to use the word best to indicate that rail was the best option, more that it would be more competitive with other modes!

Yes there is a centre at Truro. I see where you're going with this but I think logistically you'd need to ensure that as well as the issues in my OP, there would be a guaranteed minimum volume of mail to transit on that flow every night for it to be financially worth it. In addition you would of course need to factor in mail centre - rail hub transit time and cost.

With the current regional distribution network I don't see how this additional mode of transport would be necessary.

 

[BantamMenace]

Speaking of Swansea in particular, the location of the mail centre is next to the main line, but it would be costly to install container handling facilities there even if space to do so were available, which I'm not sure about.

Anywhere else and the time penalty of transporting the mail to and from the centre by road would work against rail in terms of speed. So I think it's anon starter, really.

My concept is a service where slots can be booked in advance even just an hour or so before departure and would provide a service mainly aimed at supermarkets and non perishable retailers (John Lewis, Debenhams, Next, Arcadia Group, et al). Such workings could be viable for second class mail and two-five day delivery parcels.

Such an operation wouldn't require too much additional investment to have its frequency increased as a FOC would operate, a leasing company would provide the container flat wagons and the retailers themselves would own the containers themselves although these could be offered on a lease themselves.

If you can offer an improvement on cost, speed, reliability or carbon footprint whilst holding the other three constant you have a viable business these days.

 

[RichmondCommu]

My concept is a service where slots can be booked in advance even just an hour or so before departure and would provide a service mainly aimed at supermarkets and non perishable retailers (John Lewis, Debenhams, Next, Arcadia Group, et al). Such workings could be viable for second class mail and two-five day delivery parcels.

Such an operation wouldn't require too much additional investment to have its frequency increased as a FOC would operate, a leasing company would provide the container flat wagons and the retailers themselves would own the containers themselves although these could be offered on a lease themselves.

If you can offer an improvement on cost, speed, reliability or carbon footprint whilst holding the other three constant you have a viable business these days.

The problem is many people now expect next day delivery. Even with your suggestion I'm not sure that the railways could compete on cost.

 

[ringi]

One of the reasons that Royal Mail wanted to move away from using main line terminals in London in the late 80's and early 90's were the concerns about security.

Another big issue was the most post is now sent from large processing centers that prints out outing posts from their computers. Therefore much less post is sent to/from central London.

 

[dcsprior]

Would it be more feasible if the end point for the parcel's journey was a railway station?

For instance if there were to be a set of click'n'collect outlet along a railway line, with parcels for them arriving in rollcages within luggage space in passenger trains (e.g. DVTs on the East Coast Mainline). I guess what I have in mind is the parcels being delivered overnight to wherever the trains are stabled, already in cages in order of what train they're going on.

 

[starrymarkb]

Yes Truro/Exeter leaves EMA around 2am I think. I understand Exeter - Stansted service is due a new contract, has that been renewed yet?

Yes, Now it's now flown by WestAtlantic instead of Titan Airways

 

[BantamMenace]

Would it be more feasible if the end point for the parcel's journey was a railway station?

For instance if there were to be a set of click'n'collect outlet along a railway line, with parcels for them arriving in rollcages within luggage space in passenger trains (e.g. DVTs on the East Coast Mainline). I guess what I have in mind is the parcels being delivered overnight to wherever the trains are stabled, already in cages in order of what train they're going on.

I think you'd struggle to create the quantities to make it valuable. At best you could charge a couple of quid per parcel and take about 20 parcels per service. £40 per train isnt going to make it worthwhile, might as well sell one extra ticket and make your money that way. Selling an extra EDB-LKX per service is a lot easier than messing around with a couple of hundred parcels.

I strongly believe the bulk on trunk routes where retailers and couriers share services is where the viability lies.

 

[starrymarkb]

Another Trend Parcel wise is a lot of stores are now doing free click and collect. There the parcel goes on the store's delivery trucks so are technically free from the retailer's point of view

 

[D1009]

Lets face it the railway network could never compete with that. Even the French postal TGV's have now stopped running, although I don't think they ever used the LGV routes as they are closed at night for maintenance.

Wasn't one of the TGV La Poste sets trialled into St Pancras a year or two ago? Presumably nothing came of that idea.

 

[RichmondCommu]

Wasn't one of the TGV La Poste sets trialled into St Pancras a year or two ago? Presumably nothing came of that idea.

No it was just a one off trial. The SNCF have already started cutting up some of their older TGV's and I wonder if the La Poste sets might be next.

 

[Greenback]

Yes there is a centre at Truro. I see where you're going with this but I think logistically you'd need to ensure that as well as the issues in my OP, there would be a guaranteed minimum volume of mail to transit on that flow every night for it to be financially worth it. In addition you would of course need to factor in mail centre - rail hub transit time and cost.

With the current regional distribution network I don't see how this additional mode of transport would be necessary.

I'm not sure I;m going anywhere. I'm just trying to say that the areas where rail could compete with other modes of transport for Royal Mail are every limited. I think it's a lost cause for all but a tiny handful of routes in reality.

My concept is a service where slots can be booked in advance even just an hour or so before departure and would provide a service mainly aimed at supermarkets and non perishable retailers (John Lewis, Debenhams, Next, Arcadia Group, et al). Such workings could be viable for second class mail and two-five day delivery parcels.

OK, you're talking about parcels too, which were part of the topic but I've become a bit focused on Royal Mail because of my background with them!

Interestingly, though, Royal Mail pulled out of using rail for second class mail long before it did for first class, which suggests there isn't much scope for it to return now.

Such an operation wouldn't require too much additional investment to have its frequency increased as a FOC would operate, a leasing company would provide the container flat wagons and the retailers themselves would own the containers themselves although these could be offered on a lease themselves.

If you can offer an improvement on cost, speed, reliability or carbon footprint whilst holding the other three constant you have a viable business these days.

True, but I see those as very difficult obstacles o overcome as far as rail is concerned.

Would it be more feasible if the end point for the parcel's journey was a railway station?

For instance if there were to be a set of click'n'collect outlet along a railway line, with parcels for them arriving in rollcages within luggage space in passenger trains (e.g. DVTs on the East Coast Mainline). I guess what I have in mind is the parcels being delivered overnight to wherever the trains are stabled, already in cages in order of what train they're going on.

I can't see it, sorry. It looks to me as though your suggestion is borne out of a desire to see business return to the railways, rather than any practical benefits that such a move would bring, either to operators, parcels companies or customers. Sorry to be so negative.

 

[bavvo]

Would the best solution not be a timetabled core network of intermodal services that slots could be booked on in advance. I can see this appealing to parcel firms, Internet retailers and supermarkets......

This was tried. In fact you are describing pretty much exactly the 'Liner Train' concept championed and introduced as part of the good Dr Beechings plans for the railways in the sixties. The idea was block trains of swapbody flatcars, running to regular timetables from a small number of intermodal freight yards. Sadly, the concept never took off in this fashion, although it did later evolve into the successful Freightliner business, but mostly for port to depot container traffic rather then internal flows.

Unfortunately I suspect the problems that stopped it becoming a success the first time round are still present today, in that swapping a container from truck to train to truck, with all the potential for delay + extra cost, is unattractive to a potential customer.

 

[BantamMenace]

This was tried. In fact you are describing pretty much exactly the 'Liner Train' concept championed and introduced as part of the good Dr Beechings plans for the railways in the sixties. The idea was block trains of swapbody flatcars, running to regular timetables from a small number of intermodal freight yards. Sadly, the concept never took off in this fashion, although it did later evolve into the successful Freightliner business, but mostly for port to depot container traffic rather then internal flows.

Unfortunately I suspect the problems that stopped it becoming a success the first time round are still present today, in that swapping a container from truck to train to truck, with all the potential for delay + extra cost, is unattractive to a potential customer.

I see your point but back then no business had a responsibility to the environment and today they'd love a nice slice of PR cake when they're reducing their carbon footprint and the like.
I concede that my idea put forward in this thread would need some form of further incentive but I think it ticks a lot of government boxes (lorries off roads, freight on rails, reduced carbon, some trunk flows can be electric freight with last mile) so a tax incentive wouldn't be hugely unimaginable.

 

[w1bbl3]

My concept is a service where slots can be booked in advance even just an hour or so before departure and would provide a service mainly aimed at supermarkets and non perishable retailers (John Lewis, Debenhams, Next, Arcadia Group, et al). Such workings could be viable for second class mail and two-five day delivery parcels.

Such an operation wouldn't require too much additional investment to have its frequency increased as a FOC would operate, a leasing company would provide the container flat wagons and the retailers themselves would own the containers themselves although these could be offered on a lease themselves.

If you can offer an improvement on cost, speed, reliability or carbon footprint whilst holding the other three constant you have a viable business these days.

I do not see how this would be a) cheaper b) quicker c) lower carbon than directly trucking the load from point A to point B.
You have to truck the load/parcels from the distribution centre to the rail hub then upon arrival at the destination you'd have to repeat the process in reverse.
This realistically results in two empty trip journeys as you return an empty wagon from the rail hub to the DC upon dropping the load and send a empty wagon to rail hub to collect said load, or the rail hub has to have space to store loads.

Generally as a commercial haulier you'd allow 2 hours for loading and 2 hours for unloading per trip containers are not significantly quicker as most of time will be spent waiting to get on dock not being physically loaded or unloaded. Some of retailers (and parcel networks) utilise depot shunters to pre load trailers ready for a tractor unit and driver to take away and upon arrival of a full wagon load sees the driver unhook the trailer taking a new loaded trailer away.
On very short turns the loading and unloading time dominates haulage cost as you are paying for an expensive tractor unit a driver to sit around not doing much, you also have to have another series of short turn to use up said drivers daily hours. You would really need the DC to be rail connected to make such a system economic avoiding short road journeys.

Moreover the major non-food (and food) retailers have been progressively reducing and centralising the number of DC's they have in preference of serving stores at a regional level with direct wagon load deliveries and suppliers delivering to each DC with little inter DC trunking. Some of the "click and collect" services are done by the retailer using existing courier networks to deliver to store rather than with normal sales stock deliveries. John Lewis Partnership where a major customer of CityLink for collect in store for example.

To put some numbers on this we can ship a full load using a standard 44t Artic from Brum to Nottingham for £300 (60 miles), Brum to London £400 (120 miles) or Brum to Edinburgh for £700 (300 miles). Yet Brum to Wolves and distance of 10 miles would be £150. Road haulage for full single wagon loads is incredibly cheap vs rail haulage.

Rail needs trainload volumes and distance to compete with road, parcels or retail distribution provides neither in part because the DC's are generally clustered in the middle of the country.

 

[bavvo]

Actually, I think there is a considerable market that rail could capture. Esentially the mixed load freight forwarders business.

A huge amount of freight traffic consists of less than container/wagon load. Anything between individual parcels to multiple pallet loads. These are typically picked up and shipped within the UK by the various competing logistics businesses in a hub and spoke operation. So a small partial load is collected by a truck on a local pick up route, taken to a local depot where it is then sorted and reloaded onto a larger truck to be forwarded to another hub. There it can be loaded onto a third truck for local delivery, or in some instances forwarded again to another more distant hub before being transferred to a local delivery route for the final drop off. Most of the trunking is done by HGV or airfreight, depending on distance/value (and weight sometimes).

That’s where rail could take some of that business, in the intermediate stages. If they could create a network of rail/road interchange hubs, the local pickup could still be done by trucks for door to door delivery. The bulk intermediate flows however, could be shipped by rail from hub to hub. This should, in theory be competitive on time and cost as this would not add extra transhipment time to the process (since you are just replacing truck to truck transfers with truck to rail transfers).

On the rail side you would need a network of hubs at major interchange points. These would essentially be large warehouses with a siding loop or two running through with platforms at deck height so palletised goods can simply be wheeled off quickly and transferred to the waiting trucks.
The goods trains would be either conventional curtain sided rail wagons loco hauled, or (my pet theory) converted curtain sided pacers for smaller loads, - a freight MPU. These would run to a timetabled service, and a single train could service multiple depots in sequence, loading and unloading as required.

This could be competitive on time/cost especially for the +24 hour medium/long distance traffic. Plus there would be clear environmental benefits from fewer trucks, less CO2 etc. Road would still perform local delivery, and air would still take the fast high value freight, but there is a lot of valuable business in between that rail could and should be carrying.

The biggest obstacles of course, are the huge costs to setup and the large question mark over network rails reliability. But I think it would be worth pursuing, perhaps by starting with a trial (two rail hubs).

 

[dysonsphere]

Red Star is sadlly missed cost little to run as it used spare space was a premium price and got stuff to far flung places very fast. We used to use it several times a day from all London station to some very obscure places there in hours

 

[Busaholic]

Don't know a lot about this subject, but on mail:-
1) From Penzance sorting office all mail is taken to Plymouth to be sorted, even local post
2) The privatisation of Royal Mail would preclude the govt in any form directing it or even seeking to persuade it to adopt rail or any other form of transport:TNT etc would soon be sticking their oar in
3) Certainly west of Exeter, would Royal Mail enter into a rail contract and go to huge expense while no alternative route to Plymouth etc is any nearer than it was this time last year, shortly before you-know-what?
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Red Star is sadlly missed cost little to run as it used spare space was a premium price and got stuff to far flung places very fast. We used to use it several times a day from all London station to some very obscure places there in hours

Therefore had to be got rid of for ideological reasons

 

[jopsuk]

Problem is that parcels are now the big traffic, ad they're in the hands of a multitude of ferociously competitive companies

 

[SpacePhoenix]

Didn't some classes of EMU and DMU used to have an area that could be locked off for transporting mail?

 

[cjmillsnun]

Would it be more feasible if the end point for the parcel's journey was a railway station?

For instance if there were to be a set of click'n'collect outlet along a railway line, with parcels for them arriving in rollcages within luggage space in passenger trains (e.g. DVTs on the East Coast Mainline). I guess what I have in mind is the parcels being delivered overnight to wherever the trains are stabled, already in cages in order of what train they're going on.

That's what used to happen with Red Star. It was closed down almost as soon as it was privatised.