Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
I believe that, when the railways were nationalised, the DfT demanded an 8% return on investment in rail freight. A totally unrealistic demand at a time when road hauliers were making 2%. Hence the demise of rail freight. I have no desire to return to those days.
Again, I don't wish to derail the thread, but if you total up the HGV levy, fuel duty and VAT the road haulier has to pay on diesel etc, it comes to a substantial portion of the cost of the entire road system. Last time I came up with it it was about £5bn per year, which is about the cost of operating National Highways (ie. the trunk road system overwhelmingly used by road hauliers) and about half the total.
Freight operators, like all road users, pay for the infrastructure through the levy on road fuel.
Rail operators pay very little tax at all on diesel by comparison (10.18p/L & VAT at 5% vs 52.95p/L & VAT at 20%) and pay very little for access to the railway system.
Once again I refer you to the NERA report, commissioned by the government around the year 2000. This categorically proved that road haulage does not pay its costs.
Since then, fuel and excise taxation have stagnated whereas the cost of road provision has risen at least by the rate of inflation. Inflation has raised prices by 95% in that time.
Incidentally, your calculation of rail freight costs omits track access costs which charge a price per km moved for every rail vehicle moved over the system. Road haulage, and road vehicles in general, pay no such charge, although the government is tentatively starting the process with its EV charge in 2027.
I assume that in the event of a national emergency powers would be taken to ensure that rail freight is available to support what ever measures are being taken to address the emergency. I would guess a similar situation to both WW1 and WW2. Passenger travel might also be restricted to essential journeys. I suppose a direct attack on the UK by another country would be the most likely scenario to get us to that point, but also possible catastrophic natural events.
Is there a long-term future for DRS under the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority? AGR defuelling should be complete by the mid 2030s assuming no further life-extension, and all future reactors will use interim dry storage on site. The need for transport to a central disposal facility is many decades away. Keeping a commercial rail freight operator with no nuclear role (or at most a handful of ad-hoc legacy waste movements) would seem a bit odd. Either privatisation or transfer to GBR could make sense.
Nationalizing it is one thing (it's already state owned, isn't it?), but making it part of GBR would be a different matter - the other freight operators would have legitimate concerns about competing with the infrastructure owner.
I think it'll be sold to whoever makes the best bid, and the government would only get involved if that happens to be one of the other freight operators.
DB Cargo UK is effectivly owned by the German Government.
Freight was sold by the UK Government in 1995, and DB Cargo UK went udner several owners to end up under DB and the German Government, who are now selling it to concentrate on central Europe.
Could be another company or another non UK government owned company buys it.
The UK Government could buy it for it to run under the existing UK management.
But the Government is limited for funds and will not be able to meet any possible losses.
However if DB Cargo UK folds, and road haulage takes over, could put a massive
strain on roads and potentially add to more pollution.
Could be the UK Government will find another privite company to take it on and provide some limited help
It's insane to have the tracks and management of the railway, and the steel industry, all in public hands, all ostensibly for national security reasons, but leave one crucial part of it all, transporting steel by rail, in private hands.
The steel industry is not “all in public hands”. Are you thinking of the recent nationalisation of (just) British Steel?
I wasn’t aware that the ‘nationalisation’ of most passenger train operations, variously between GB/‘England’ and sundry devolved bodies had been pursued for national security reasons.
Personally I think that GBR should have a freight operation, now whether purchasing DB Cargo is the way to go I don't know. As others mention there is already DRS but that's quite indirectly nationalised and as far as I know is currently not planned to be integrated with GBR at all.
Given we've left the EU I do think we should be maximising whatever minuscule benefits we can and one of them should surely be the ability to throw away the strict competition laws where we think it's necessary. E.g. GBR should have priority over open access operators when it comes to pathing.
I don't personally think we should have Open access passenger operations, I don't feel as strongly about freight (passenger services are a public utility, freight is more commercial in nature).
Like mentioned by others I think it would be good to have DRS expanded so we can transport British steel to British factories via British trains (yes obviously the trains themselves are made elsewhere largely but we can fix that long term)
Noting the sale of DB Cargo UK being mooted, should GBR also have a freight business as a means of generating additional income?
Would purchasing DB Cargo UK into DfT Operator Ltd be a good plan to acquire one rather than starting one from scratch? Or would expanding Direct Rail Services, already nationalised, be a better plan?
Consider your position as a possible commercial user of a freight service offered by GBR. Would you make long term arrangements for traffic flows with an organisation that is not wholly and entirely committed to keeping you happy and where is objectives can vary according to the whims of whichever party is in Government and the county's finances?
Whatever good intentions are being expressed at the moment, GBR will remain being tightly controlled by the Department for Transport (DfT) and will have to follow its edicts. This means GBR will have to follow 'policies' and 'guidance' issued by the DfT. Even if these policies are not directly linked to the freight business they may have adverse effects on the services GBR offers to freight customers.
Growing traffic, whether passenger or freight, does not depend on central 'strategies' or 'policies' but on close attention to the requirements and desires of the individual customers and fulfilling these in a manner acceptable to both sides. An organisation whose attention is being pulled in several directions at the same time will not be able to give freight customers the attention they need and deserve.
If GBR wants to offer a freight service, so be it. But don't be surprised if nobody uses it.
Once again I refer you to the NERA report, commissioned by the government around the year 2000. This categorically proved that road haulage does not pay its costs.
Since then, fuel and excise taxation have stagnated whereas the cost of road provision has risen at least by the rate of inflation. Inflation has raised prices by 95% in that time.
Well VAT on road fuel went up, HGVs now pay £200m a year in the HGV levy, and fuel prices went up that cause VAT to raise more money from road fuel....
In any case, environmental impact of road freight (and thus externalised costs) will have fallen considerably in the last 25 years. Whilst railways love to keep using EMD 2-stroke diesels forever, virtually no road haulage vehicles on the road in 2000 are on the road today.
We have gone from Euro I, II and III standards to Euro VI, which is the standard that applies to a very large fraction of road haulage vehicles on the road today given that it was introduced in 2012.
Since Euro III, emissions of hydrocarbons have fallen by three quarters, NOx has fallen by a factor of 10, as have engine particulates and we are now measuring more categories of pollutant (ammonia and certain classes of particulates) that weren't controlled before.
I'd suggest that an externalities internationalisation report from a quarter century ago isn't that useful in the modern era.
We are also going to see Euro VII creep in in the next couple of years with even stricter standards.
Incidentally, your calculation of rail freight costs omits track access costs which charge a price per km moved for every rail vehicle moved over the system.
That's because rail freight pays access charges at a scale far below that which would be reflective of actual costs.
Total rail freight revenue for Network Rail was £70m in the FY2025 accounts (page 194/228 of the PDF). This is a rounding error even on railfreight industry finances.
EDIT: I think we should probably make a separate thread for such discussions to avoid clogging this one.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Consider your position as a possible commercial user of a freight service offered by GBR. Would you make long term arrangements for traffic flows with an organisation that is not wholly and entirely committed to keeping you happy and where is objectives can vary according to the whims of whichever party is in Government and the county's finances?
I'm not sure that even a private operator can remain immune to government policy, given that it must inevitably operate on a system controlled by the government.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
I believe Sheffield Forgemasters is now in the hands of the MoD, Speciality Steel and the broader Liberty Steel are in the hands of the liquidator and thus the state, and as you note British Steel is now nationalised.
Whilst not quite "all in public hands", those organisations do represent a rather large fraction of the remaining steel industry in the UK.
Growing traffic, whether passenger or freight, does not depend on central 'strategies' or 'policies' but on close attention to the requirements and desires of the individual customers and fulfilling these in a manner acceptable to both sides. An organisation whose attention is being pulled in several directions at the same time will not be able to give freight customers the attention they need and deserve.
If GBR wants to offer a freight service, so be it. But don't be surprised if nobody uses it.
From Rail Journal https://www.railjournal.com/financial/db-puts-british-freight-business-up-for-sale
Advisors have now been appointed for the sale of DB Cargo UK
Although it lost £12.3m, losses have been reducing, so as it is a viable company could sell at a good price for the German Government to help the rest of DB Cargo Europe (which seems also to be making a loss).
It seems to have a good UK management team who can keep existing customers.
Will be interesting to see if anyone bids, (most likely M and G Infracapital, owners of GBRFwhich is in profit), the UK Government, or if it has to close?
Unless it is blocked by a Government decision (policy, strategic, key business etc), then in theory an organisation could buy it and sell it off piecemeal rather than run it as a going concern.
It appears to have over 200 locomotives, 2155 employees.
The locomotives are generally not new, but might find an overseas buyer
Not clear yet, how Government or Unions will react, or if any employees will now decide to jump ship and work for another Operator
Unless it is blocked by a Government decision (policy, strategic, key business etc), then in theory an organisation could buy it and sell it off piecemeal rather than run it as a going concern.
It appears to have over 200 locomotives, 2155 employees.
The locomotives are generally not new, but might find an overseas buyer
Not clear yet, how Government or Unions will react, or if any employees will now decide to jump ship and work for another Operator
State companies are bloated with waste, have no incentive to cut costs and be commercially dynamic, no incentive to grow market share or profits. So in effect they'll be out competed by GBRF, Freightliner, Colas etc who will have lower costs and a better commercial drive to win contracts.
I'm not certain that aligns with history, BR made many strategic investments, had lots of innovative programmes, and also rationalised and cut many costs.
More recently, many foreign state companies have won competative tenders to provide rail services here in the UK - lets not forget that DB stands for Deutsche Bahn.
So another option is each GBR area has a small fleet of locos for work in there own region which is not commercial work such as RHTT, weed killer trains and the Test trains and thunderbird. Then leaves Colas, GBRF, Freightliner and heavy haul to run all the commercial work. So the work that DB does at present is transfered to them and the Network rail contacts go back to the GBR areas.
That means creating a number of "micro fleets" that would be less than intensively used. That also means hiring, training and maintaining the competence of a number of drivers, shunters and fitters, creating & staffing maintenance sites, arranging support contracts for parts, consumables & the like, altering existing distribution flows and arranging paths for all of these moves - all of which costs a lot of money.
You might say we could have one central location for all of that but the same still applies. Also what do you do, say, when the materials distribution hub for ballast sits in Central but the work site sits in Eastern? Are you saying there should be a distribution hub in each area? That is more cost.
Direct Rail Services is nationalised, presumably that could be used for strategic steel transport of that nature e.g. in a hypothetical war with Russia.
Surely in such a state you would just use your emergency powers and take direct control of the railway network and operators as per the Railway Executive.
I'd be careful in using the steel 'nationalisation' as a general comparator. Forgemasters was brought into MOD ownership in order to retain UK capability to forge nuclear reactors for submarines and in particular the continued viability of the Dreadnought class programme. Arguably more like Direct Rail Services than anything else.
At the current state of play with the level of Department for Transport micro-management still remaining at "GBR'd" operating companies I just can't see a government purchase of a freight company working out when it needs to compete to survive without huge subsidy. Which arguably freight already gets in lower access charges to actual cost (as does road haulage.)
That means creating a number of "micro fleets" that would be less than intensively used. That also means hiring, training and maintaining the competence of a number of drivers, shunters and fitters, creating & staffing maintenance sites, arranging support contracts for parts, consumables & the like, altering existing distribution flows and arranging paths for all of these moves - all of which costs a lot of money.
You might say we could have one central location for all of that but the same still applies. Also what do you do, say, when the materials distribution hub for ballast sits in Central but the work site sits in Eastern? Are you saying there should be a distribution hub in each area? That is more cost.
I think departmental requirements could probably be most economically met with MPVs (or the more modern Windhoff product the 'Ventus', other manufacturers are available) and a relative handful of Class 99 type locomotives for the hauling of heavy loads like ballast and large consignments of rail.
I imagine the ballast and rail hauling locomotives would be most economically based at the location where ballast and rails and things of that nature originate. There seems to be rather a lot of departmental work which is extremely poorly suited to 'conventional' freight locmotives, such as RHTT.
I think departmental requirements could probably be most economically met with MPVs (or the more modern Windhoff product the 'Ventus', other manufacturers are available) and a relative handful of Class 99 type locomotives for the hauling of heavy loads like ballast and large consignments of rail.
I imagine the ballast and rail hauling locomotives would be most economically based at the location where ballast and rails and things of that nature originate. There seems to be rather a lot of departmental work which is extremely poorly suited to 'conventional' freight locmotives, such as RHTT.
You might want to ask yourself why Railtrack and NR have not acquired their own locomotives for shifting pway materials. Probably because there are significant savings to be had by contracting in locomotives that are largely used on weekdays for “revenue” freight duties rather than buying their own separate fleet.
You might want to ask yourself why Railtrack and NR have not acquired their own locomotives for shifting pway materials. Probably because there are significant savings to be had by contracting in locomotives that are largely used on weekdays for “revenue” freight duties rather than buying their own separate fleet.
Even for ‘internal’ Network Services purposes? What about the system monitoring and inspection trains (and by extension, railhead treatment MPVs, de-icers, weedkillers, drain cleaners, etc.)?
If First had kept GBRf would it have made hiring locomotives for the sleepers easier? It would also have enabled First GW/GWR to have had access to route conductors for engineering diversions etc.
Even for ‘internal’ Network Services purposes? What about the system monitoring and inspection trains (and by extension, railhead treatment MPVs, de-icers, weedkillers, drain cleaners, etc.)?
I suppose that might change once GBR is running, but I wouldn't be surprised if the combination of traction and route knowledge needed to do so kept them in the hands of the FOCs.
I suppose that might change once GBR is running, but I wouldn't be surprised if the combination of traction and route knowledge needed to do so kept them in the hands of the FOCs.
Thanks. I was aware of that but had thought that that was simply for ‘operating convenience’ rather than a ban as such.
Do such trains have to have an access agreement and processes for bidding for what are presumably very variable paths?
I suppose that might change once GBR is running, but I wouldn't be surprised if the combination of traction and route knowledge needed to do so kept them in the hands of the FOCs.
In the case of Merseyrail, I believe a lot of departmental services were historically run by the TOC using their in-house Class 73s. Although I can't remember when those were disposed of.
In the case of Merseyrail, I believe a lot of departmental services were historically run by the TOC using their in-house Class 73s. Although I can't remember when those were disposed of.
Until the Network Rail MPVs came in these were indeed run with a varying combination of old Class 501 units and 73s (and sometimes a 501 driving trailer/73 sandwich). Those services (Sandite spreading and the likes) are now done by Network Rail diesel MPVs.
I'm not sure that even a private operator can remain immune to government policy, given that it must inevitably operate on a system controlled by the government.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
This is another one of those situations where choosing brevity rather than describing the thought process in detail can lead to misunderstandings. So, this is a slightly longer attempt to explain what I was trying to say.
Firstly, the economy works in a framework which has evolved over generations and which is defined by shared experience, custom and practice, common and statute laws. By and large it works well, but as things change the framework will adapt. It always has done but maybe not as quickly as some interest groups would like.
In the situation under consideration contract law enables two or more parties to agree on actions knowing that if things go wrong a previously agreed set of remedies can be invoked. In the case of the railways both the British Transport Commission and its successor the British Railways Board functioned as state organs under the direct control of the Ministry of Transport, later the Department for Transport: there was no contractual agreement between the parties.
The effect of this was that funding could be delayed or cut back with no notice; government inquiries into pay and conditions could, and did, affect the railways finances; fares and freight charges were controlled by government in pursuit of other policies; capital expenditures were cut overnight. Remember when spending on the Euston - Liverpool - Manchester electrification was suddenly stopped which left, for example, Stafford station a half demolished and unfinished building site for months?
Many examples of such behaviour can be found in different histories of British Railways and they were an important reason why John Edmonds, Railtrack’s first CEO and ex-British Rail, pushed for Railtrack to be floated as a private company so that its relationship with the government would be on the basis of contract law rather than the less regulated relationship that BR ‘enjoyed’. It should not be forgotten that the government’s original intention was to continue to own the infrastructure with private companies operating the services analogous to the situation with the roads. Edmond's forceful interventions caused the government to change its mind.
So, the point I am trying to make is that at the moment it does not appear that Great British Railways will be a company operating in a contractual relationship with the Department for Transport; the infrastructure side and the operating side are remaining under different legal, regulatory and financial frameworks so talking about a unified company is unrealistic. If there are contracts there is at least a degree of certainty.
I am not arguing that governments cannot change its policies - but if there are contracts then governments have to give due warning of changes. If there are no contracts and the only reference framework is ‘policies’ then the framework can change overnight, as can financial and funding arrangments.
I can assure you that acts of mind-blowing and utterly staggering acts of blithering incompetence are also found extensively within the private sector.
We are aware of an issue with emails from the Forum to Microsoft-based email accounts (hotmail/outlook/live.com email addresses). This is being looked into currently, thanks for your patience meanwhile.
