Rail Freight Flows and News UK

[class 9]

Deleted, already answered.

 

[leomartin125]

Does anyone know if the logs to Chirk are running this weekend? If they are, when does the inbound working arrive at Aberystwyth?


Many thanks

 

[northstaffsman]

66705 passing through Longton working from Tinsley to Land Recovery at Longport with looks like redundant GBRF MGR hoppers. This is the first such movement as far as I know. Anyone shed any further light on this?

 

[littledude]

It's a loaded aggregate train into Aggregate Industries' Tinsley terminal. The product is usually sourced from Bardon Hill quarry but a change of company ownership and contracts means it is now additionally being sourced from Land Recovery's Longport site. The hoppers are also far from redundant, they're used daily and have actually been shortened since their days hauling coal on MGR traffic due to their new load being more dense than coal.

 

[northstaffsman]

It's a loaded aggregate train into Aggregate Industries' Tinsley terminal. The product is usually sourced from Bardon Hill quarry but a change of company ownership and contracts means it is now additionally being sourced from Land Recovery's Longport site. The hoppers are also far from redundant, they're used daily and have actually been shortened since their days hauling coal on MGR traffic due to their new load being more dense than coal.

Thanks for the information. This is the first aggregate flow into Longport I have seen that hasn't made us of Colas as the operator.

 

[Trainman40083]

It's a loaded aggregate train into Aggregate Industries' Tinsley terminal. The product is usually sourced from Bardon Hill quarry but a change of company ownership and contracts means it is now additionally being sourced from Land Recovery's Longport site. The hoppers are also far from redundant, they're used daily and have actually been shortened since their days hauling coal on MGR traffic due to their new load being more dense than coal.

Must be a fun climb from Stoke to Caverswall.

 

[Bob figgis]

I think the Tinsley to Longport is the empty working, not as Littledude said as it being loaded.

 

[Trainman40083]

I think the Tinsley to Longport is the empty working, not as Littledude said as it being loaded.

Will be loaded with recycled ballast from Longport. Ever increasing aggregate taxes (for new) makes it a more viable option.

 

[AndrewE]

can somebody with a practised eye tell us whether the bogie springs are compressed or not in the pictures in post #2313?

 

[JKF]

=====================
Other ports with container trains
=====================

(…)

Avonmouth is another place which has seen a limited amount of container traffic through the port using rail. The more recent container trains to Avonmouth from London Gateway don't really count, as they are using it as an inland terminal for imported wine. However, there were other container movements in the EWS era, both via "Enterprise" and a block train to Tyne Dock which conveyed components for Nissan at Sunderland, as seen here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/74165767@N05/49259544261/ (Photo: Driver 59)

08896 with "Enterprise" container traffic being offloaded at Avonmouth:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/74165767@N05/49210473982/ (Photo: Driver 59)

I'm not sure where those containers would have been shipped to, and it's hard to imagine scenes of wagonload container traffic (like the one with 08896) taking place now...

I always appreciate your thorough posts on this thread.

The ‘plonkliner’ wine trains serving Avonmouth did run to Portbury for a short while a couple of years ago, mainly on a Saturday. I did wonder if this was a temporary arrangement due to work taking place at Avonmouth, since it made both the rail and road transfer parts of the journey longer and more complex!

Portbury was actual built as a container port in the late 70s (albeit without a rail connection) and had two huge container cranes which dominated the skyline, but the traffic never appeared and the cranes were dismantled and sold a couple of decades ago.

There are plans (and planning consent) for a deep-sea container port at Avonmouth but they’re waiting for the right economic conditions before proceeding, which might never happen. The improvements made for railfreight access for imported coal traffic early this century (including doubling of the Henbury line) would be beneficial if traffic ever arrives.

 

[northstaffsman]

Attached are a couple of photos showing the reinstated sidings beside Longport station. I understand they are to be used as additional sidings for Land Recovery. Does anyone have any information about when the sidings might be brought into use?

 

[Adrian Barr]

66705 passing through Longton working from Tinsley to Land Recovery at Longport with looks like redundant GBRF MGR hoppers.

Good catch... an interesting working. These HYAs were indeed former coal hoppers - some of them were originally coded IIA - which as littledude says have been "cut and shut" to reduce the length to make them suitable for aggregate use. A full-length coal hopper completely filled with aggregate would be seriously overweight due to the different product densities, and partially filling long coal wagons with aggregate is less efficient than using shorter wagons due to the train length being a limiting factor at some terminals. The original wagon length was 61 feet (reduced to 49 feet) so it's quite a big difference.

can somebody with a practised eye tell us whether the bogie springs are compressed or not in the pictures in post #2313?

TOPS data for one of the wagons (HYA wagon 7069552141) shows it ran loaded from Bardon Hill to Tinsley as 6E97 on 22nd Jan, empty to Longport as 6M06, loaded to Tinsley as 6E97, then empty back to Bardon Hill as 6M01 on the 23rd. The traffic is loaded into Tinsley (which is what littledude said) which makes sense since Longport doesn't have hopper discharge facilities and Tinsley is a receiving terminal rather than a loading point, serving Holcim (formerly Aggregate Industries) asphalt and concrete plants.
66708 seen at the hopper house at Tinsley in 2023 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/jimbo33201/53081590457/ (Photo: Jim Mosley)

There was another working on Friday (29th), again using one of the HYA sets based at Bardon Hill. This worked from Bardon Hill to Tinsley as 6E97 (loaded) - a regular working. The empties then formed 6M06 10:51 Tinsley to Longport, with the wagons loaded at Longport to form 6E97 17:03 back to Tinsley. 66716 was the loco, hauling 20 loaded HYAs.

The ‘plonkliner’ wine trains serving Avonmouth did run to Portbury for a short while a couple of years ago, mainly on a Saturday...

Portbury was actual built as a container port in the late 70s (albeit without a rail connection) and had two huge container cranes which dominated the skyline, but the traffic never appeared and the cranes were dismantled and sold a couple of decades ago.

In addition to the wine train, Portbury has had a very small amount of wagonload container traffic within the last decade. The Portbury car train was part of the wagonload network and occasionally conveyed small amounts of container traffic from Barry Docks, despite the short distance. For example 6B39 Barry Docks - AD Junction on 01/02/17 had 4 loaded FCAs with containers for Portbury (3 empty 20-foot containers on each wagon), along with 2 loaded FCAs for Southampton Docks and 4 empty FCAs.

This nice photo of the Arpley - Portbury train at Pilning taken in 2014 has container traffic visible at the back, which the caption mentions was from Barry Docks and would have been attached at Newport AD Junction. The vehicle traffic from Portbury was to Doncaster Railport around this time, via Warrington:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/129566999@N08/15737259479/ (Photo: Stuart Riley)

 

[ExRes]

Someone on Class 60 facebook has posted a claim that Middleton Towers is due to close in April, if true I wonder where that leaves the sand supply position to Ravenhead

 

[furnessvale]

Someone on Class 60 facebook has posted a claim that Middleton Towers is due to close in April, if true I wonder where that leaves the sand supply position to Ravenhead

Back to supply by road from Cheshire/Staffordshire?

 

[Bob figgis]

Someone on Class 60 facebook has posted a claim that Middleton Towers is due to close in April, if true I wonder where that leaves the sand supply position to Ravenhead

I would think there’d be a big impact on the glass works at Barnby Dunn, Goole and Monk Bretton as well, if Middleton Towers is to close.

 

[ExRes]

Back to supply by road from Cheshire/Staffordshire?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 8 Feb 2026 ==

I would think there’d be a big impact on the glass works at Barnby Dunn, Goole and Monk Bretton as well, if Middleton Towers is to close.

Thanks both, it appears the contributor has made a reset since the original post, it now seems that the GBRf operated flows to Barnby Bun and Goole are to transfer to road transport, Middleton Towers will remain open and so will the DCR rail flow to Ravenhead

 

[geordieblue]

I would think there’d be a big impact on the glass works at Barnby Dunn, Goole and Monk Bretton as well, if Middleton Towers is to close.

The Goole flow has already ended (last train was in December I think). Not sure about Barnby Dunn/Monk Bretton though.

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

Have there been any freight movements around Grimsby recently?

 

[Freightmaster]

Have there been any freight movements around Grimsby recently?

The stone traffic is still running - there was a delivery last Tuesday:

Realtime Trains | Departures from Grimsby Pyewipe Road S.B. between 0600 and 2000 on 03/02/2026

Train information at Grimsby Pyewipe Road S.B. between 0600 and 2000 on 03/02/2026. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

MARK

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

The stone traffic is still running - there was a delivery last Tuesday:

Realtime Trains | Departures from Grimsby Pyewipe Road S.B. between 0600 and 2000 on 03/02/2026

Train information at Grimsby Pyewipe Road S.B. between 0600 and 2000 on 03/02/2026. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

MARK

Any updates on the DB test runs or the Grimsby dock branch reactivation

 

[Adrian Barr]

Any updates on the DB test runs or the Grimsby dock branch reactivation

There were some DB light engine movements over the "light railway" in September, doing route learning for some freight diversions during that month due to engineering work on the line into Immingham Docks. See this thread - https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...he-grimsby-light-railway.292480/#post-7481118

I'm not aware of any test runs or freight movements around Grimsby since then, apart from the GBRF stone trains.

I've not heard anything more about future plans for rail traffic into the docks since reading the posts in your thread last year.

 

[AndrewE]

we watched 4S38 yesterday with a 93 on it gaining time most of the way, today https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:H35931/2026-02-11/detailed it is losing time on the way to Carnforth and it hasn't even got to Shap yet! 22 late now, don't know what is working it...

 

[j37401]

66108. I haven’t been following its progress but a quick look on the maps shows it not far behind 4S44 north of Carnforth which is running 80 mins behind schedule. Maybe the reason for 4S38 slow progress? Or heavier train today?

 

[Adrian Barr]

watched 4S38 yesterday with a 93 on it gaining time most of the way, today https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:H35931/2026-02-11/detailed it is losing time on the way to Carnforth and it hasn't even got to Shap yet! 22 late now, don't know what is working it...

4S44 was 23 late through Preston, looped at Barton & Broughton to allow 1S69 and 9S70 to pass, then 4S38 has been delayed following 4S44 to Carlisle.

4S44 is 68003 with 1137 tons trailing, 4S38 is 66108 with 815 tons trailing today.

For a comparison of 93 vs 66 performance on 4S38, see this post - https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/class-93-tri-mode-loco.210779/post-7671524

 

[Inafinus]

Apologies if this has been covered already but what’s the latest on the Portbury > Margam steel flow? Every recent diagram has been cancelled according to my (free) view in RTT. Has this service stopped for the time being? I ask because I like to plan my after-work rides to catch a glimpse of it along the Pill Path!

 

[Freightmaster]

Apologies if this has been covered already but what’s the latest on the Portbury > Margam steel flow? Every recent diagram has been cancelled according to my (free) view in RTT.

According to RTT+, the last run was on Thursday January 29th.




MARK

 

[AndrewE]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crm8jxy7213o must be good news for rail freight as well as for Scunthorpe...

British Steel says it has begun round-the-clock rail manufacturing operations for the first time in more than a decade after securing a major contract with Turkey.

The order, said to be worth tens of millions of pounds, is for a 372-mile (599km) high-speed electric railway between the capital Ankara and the port city of Izmir.

I guess the rail will go by sea, given the distance, but that will mean setting up a butt-welding factory at the other end. Raw materials in to Scunthorpe too.
(I can't imagine a LWR train and its empty return being viable over the distance, even if you could get it across the Bosphorus!)

 

[zwk500]

(I can't imagine a LWR train and its empty return being viable over the distance, even if you could get it across the Bosphorus!)

I'd love to see a LWR train being hauled through their relatively new Marmaray tunnel, but I agree with you the likelihood is a sea route given Izmir has a rail-connected port (or it could go to another Turkish port if needed). The Turkish government won't mind at all having some fabrication at their end, it's jobs and investment.

However there's obviously the raw materials in and the output steel from Scunthorpe to whichever port gets used where rail freight might be a viable option. Will be interesting to see what happens.

 

[AndrewE]

I'd love to see a LWR train being hauled through their relatively new Marmaray tunnel, but I agree with you the likelihood is a sea route given Izmir has a rail-connected port (or it could go to another Turkish port if needed). The Turkish government won't mind at all having some fabrication at their end, it's jobs and investment.

However there's obviously the raw materials in and the output steel from Scunthorpe to whichever port gets used where rail freight might be a viable option. Will be interesting to see what happens.

I would think for the quantity involved and the rail lengths it will have to be by rail... BR latterly adapted the flash-butt welding factory at Castleton to handle 120 ft lengths as it halved the number of joints. How long are the lengths which a ship could handle? Given that there are about 1500 miles of rail to be shipped would it be worth adapting a long ro-ro ship to be a long rail carrier? Unload off the end of a LWR train straight into the ship? or, (more likely as a ship takes periodic big batches) combine that with a LWR stockyard at the port?

 

[zwk500]

I would think for the quantity involved and the rail lengths it will have to be by rail... BR latterly adapted the flash-butt welding factory at Castleton to handle 120 ft lengths as it halved the number of joints. How long are the lengths which a ship could handle? Given that there are about 1500 miles of rail to be shipped would it be worth adapting a long ro-ro ship to be a long rail carrier? Unload off the end of a LWR train straight into the ship? or, (more likely as a ship takes periodic big batches) combine that with a LWR stockyard at the port?

This British Steel press release: https://britishsteel.co.uk/news/bri...ys-mersin-adana-gaziantep-high-speed-railway/ for another HSR project in the same area suggests it was shipped in 36m (120ft) lengths from Goole.

British Steel starts shipping rail for Mersin-Adana-Gaziantep High Speed Railway in Turkey​

The first shipment in a multi-million-pound rail contract will leave British Steel for Turkey this week.

As previously announced, we are supplying tens of thousands of tonnes of track for the project connecting Mersin with the cities of Adana, Osmaniye and Gaziantep in southern Turkey.

It will help create a lower-emission transport link between Turkey’s second-largest container port and inland cities more than 150 miles away, with the project expected to reduce CO2 emissions by more than 150,000 tonnes a year.

A team from Ronesans Holding, which is constructing the Mersin-Adana-Gaziantep High Speed Railway on behalf of the Turkish Ministry of Transport, has just toured our Scunthorpe operations for factory acceptance testing.

Following the success of that visit, the first part of the order will set sail from Goole to Turkey in the days ahead.

The rails are 60E1 in grade R260, each at 36 metres in length.