Varamis Rail Class 321s & 325s”

[Brush 4]

What happened to stop Varamis running trains?

 

[fgwrich]

What happened to stop Varamis running trains?

Money, lack of staff it seemed. IIRC wasn’t it the case where one of their incidents occurred when it turned out the driver was also their safety inspector?

It’s a real shame that the UK seems to have such a backwards attitude to moving Mail & Parcels by rail, but between DBs & Royal Mails lack of interest, and Colas / TNT & Varamis’s plans seemingly down the drain it looks like it’ll remain a bit of a dead duck for some time.

 

[GraphitProjekt]

going back a bit, I always think of the original Railnet scheme as being such a tragic series of events. Somehow we were willing to invest loads in building all of the terminals and rolling stock, but then hardly used them. Imagine trying to convince anyone these days to build 9 rail/parcel terminals and a dedicated fleet of EMUs, you'd be laughed out the room. It reminds me a little bit of the Eurostar Regional/Nighstar aspirations of the same era. So much money put into enabling works like Manchester International depot and re-electrifying the NLL from 3rd rail to 25kV (another piece of investment that would be unthinkable today), yet it was just given up on.

 

[ExRes]

Will there be some 321s on the move tomorrow? I've noticed a few services, ran by Hanson & Hall, pathed as 321s for tomorrow, going from Wembley to Northampton, then Birmingham and back.

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:K66385/2026-08-27/detailed

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:K66384/2026-08-27/detailed

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:K66383/2026-08-27/detailed

3N21 now showing on RTT as cancelled

 

[172007]

going back a bit, I always think of the original Railnet scheme as being such a tragic series of events. Somehow we were willing to invest loads in building all of the terminals and rolling stock, but then hardly used them. Imagine trying to convince anyone these days to build 9 rail/parcel terminals and a dedicated fleet of EMUs, you'd be laughed out the room. It reminds me a little bit of the Eurostar Regional/Nighstar aspirations of the same era. So much money put into enabling works like Manchester International depot and re-electrifying the NLL from 3rd rail to 25kV (another piece of investment that would be unthinkable today), yet it was just given up on.

I am not quite so sure about you conclusion re the railnet scheme. If someone told them that the parcels volume business would exolode through online shopping i immagine there would have been a few more railnet locations added for parcels. the locations would have better served the parcels opperation as railnet was for letters in reality which has collapsed in volume.

Right idea, wrong part of the business.

 

[GraphitProjekt]

So would it have been not possible or prohibitively expensive to repurpose the terminals for parcels? Willesden to Newcastle and Glasgow were used by royal mail until recently, was that all letters?

 

[zwk500]

It’s a real shame that the UK seems to have such a backwards attitude to moving Mail & Parcels by rail

It's not so much a backwards attitude, but a realistic appraisal of the situation.

The UK isn't very big, and has a very very busy railway. Parcels still need to get from distribution centers to front doors anyway, so the rail leg is competing against trunk distribution legs. However, compare the efficiency of 1 driver taking 12 lorries' worth of parcels at one time, twice per day, to the ability to despatch 12 individual lorries an hour apart as they fill up. Also as the mail sorting has got automated demand for bigger sites has meant the distribution centres have moved away from town and city centres to industrial parks, often much further from railways. And the Railway has taken out things like cab roads that used to let vans load directly into the trains, and has fewer staff on hand to move trolleys around passenger stations, so it needs dedicated terminals rather than making use of spare capacity at other facilities (not that there's much of that left anyway now). Then consider the demand for speed, and it's easy to see why willingness to invest in trunk parcels services for the UK is low.

There's a good video 'Night Mail 2'

which includes key points like all passenger traffic at Derby being stopped for a couple of hours to shunt all the postal trains. That level of priority wouldn't be given now, even under a fully integrated GBR.

That's not to say we couldn't do better - GWR used to a decent sideline in small goods from Cornwall on early trains, but then the IETs were built without the guard's space to put them in so that's stopped.

 

[Jacob Porrett]

going back a bit, I always think of the original Railnet scheme as being such a tragic series of events. Somehow we were willing to invest loads in building all of the terminals and rolling stock, but then hardly used them. Imagine trying to convince anyone these days to build 9 rail/parcel terminals and a dedicated fleet of EMUs, you'd be laughed out the room. It reminds me a little bit of the Eurostar Regional/Nighstar aspirations of the same era. So much money put into enabling works like Manchester International depot and re-electrifying the NLL from 3rd rail to 25kV (another piece of investment that would be unthinkable today), yet it was just given up on.

Didn't ROG set up a similar thing with 769s and but them in a blue livery but it never came to anything and the units just sit around in yards rusting away.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

So would it have been not possible or prohibitively expensive to repurpose the terminals for parcels? Willesden to Newcastle and Glasgow were used by royal mail until recently, was that all letters?

I visited the Willesden facility once; it makes no difference if it was letters or parcels being carried because everything was sorted elsewhere and it was a simple matter of getting loaded "York" trollies off the lorries and onto the trains and vice versa.

 

[Skimpot flyer]

The 325s that ran from Willesden PRDC conveyed up to 708 York containers if run as 3 EMUs.
They were full of parcels and the Yorks for Scotland would be separated. One carriage would be filled with Aberdeen, one with Inverness and one with (Amazon) returns, going to the Scottish Distribution Centre. All the rest would be loaded with the Glasgow/Edinburgh parcels, which of course is where the bulk of parcels in Scotland are destined.
As no day was ever the same, space in any carriage would be utilised on an ad-hoc basis, to minimise unused capacity.

Letters are a tiny percentage of Royal Mail’s traffic these days, and most bulk mailings from businesses are collected & sorted by competitors such as UK Mail. They hand them over to RM and pay for the final delivery element

 

[172007]

Surely RM dont use Yorks anymore, would it not be containerised like airline containers.

 

[Trainbike46]

Surely RM dont use Yorks anymore, would it not be containerised like airline containers.

If the below news article from 2024 is to be believed, they very much do use Yorks, as it talks about a project to modernise the yorks.

Royal Mail introduces digital tags to boost efficiency and cut carbon

Royal Mail has partnered with tech innovator Wiliot to transform the way it tracks items travelling through its network, using breakthrough digital tagging to provide “unprecedented visibility”.

www.packagingnews.co.uk

In any case, Yorks appear to be wheeled trolleys, which make a lot of sense in a parcel and post distribution system, not least because it enables easy splitting and combining of different flows on vehicles.

 

[sh24]

Surely RM dont use Yorks anymore, would it not be containerised like airline containers.

Yorks are invaluable. Most despatching locations can't handle an airline ULD but a small wheeled trolley is perfect. Sometimes too perfect as quite a lot disappear.

 

[Skimpot flyer]

Didn't ROG set up a similar thing with 769s and but them in a blue livery but it never came to anything and the units just sit around in yards rusting away.

They were actually used at Willesden in service with Royal Mail for a few months around October 2021. They proved unreliable for various reasons and the contract was terminated.

I well remember my shift manager and senior executives waiting on the Platform 1 and 2 island at PRDC when the first blue train rolled in. I chuckled quietly to myself when I saw how the points were set… and it rolled in to Platform 3

<photo from personal collection>

 

[Toby3875]

Are the class 321s still at Carlisle

 

[Jacob Porrett]

Are the class 321s still at Carlisle

Yes

 

[XCTurbostar]

This is the currently list of rolling stock owned by Varamis Rail:

Type	Number	Livery	Location	Notes
321/3	321334​	Swift Rail Freight Livery	Willesden Railnet Reception
321/3	321339​	Greater Anglia (Grey Doors)	Willesden Railnet Reception
321/3	321341​	Greater Anglia (Grey Doors)	Willesden Railnet Reception
321/3	321342​	Greater Anglia (Grey Doors)	Newport (Simms)	Mostly scrapped
321/4	321407​	First Capital Connect Purple (Pink Doors)	Willesden Railnet Reception
321/4	321419​	First Capital Connect Purple (Pink Doors)	Willesden Railnet Reception
321/4	321428​	National Express East Anglia Unbranded	Carlisle Sidings
321/4	321429​	National Express East Anglia Unbranded	Carlisle Sidings
321/4	321440​	Greater Anglia (Red Doors)	Willesden Railnet Reception	No Pantograph
325/0	325001​	Grey Unbranded	Willesden PRDC
325/0	325002​	Grey Unbranded	Willesden PRDC
325/0	325005​	Grey Unbranded	Willesden PRDC
325/0	325011​	Grey Unbranded	Willesden PRDC
325/0	325014​	Grey Unbranded	Willesden PRDC
325/0	325015​	Grey Unbranded	Willesden PRDC

 

[DBS92042]

This is the currently list of rolling stock owned by Varamis Rail:

Type	Number	Livery	Location	Notes
321/3	321334​	Swift Rail Freight Livery	Willesden Railnet Reception
321/3	321339​	Greater Anglia (Grey Doors)	Willesden Railnet Reception
321/3	321341​	Greater Anglia (Grey Doors)	Mossend Yard
321/3	321342​	Greater Anglia (Grey Doors)	Mossend Yard
321/4	321407​	First Capital Connect Purple (Pink Doors)	Willesden Railnet Reception
321/4	321419​	First Capital Connect Purple (Pink Doors)	Mossend Yard
321/4	321428​	National Express East Anglia Unbranded	Carlisle Sidings
321/4	321429​	National Express East Anglia Unbranded	Carlisle Sidings
321/4	321440​	Greater Anglia (Red Doors)	Willesden Railnet Reception	No Pantograph
325/0	325001​	Grey Unbranded	Willesden PRDC
325/0	325002​	Grey Unbranded	Willesden PRDC
325/0	325005​	Grey Unbranded	Willesden PRDC
325/0	325011​	Grey Unbranded	Willesden PRDC
325/0	325014​	Grey Unbranded	Willesden PRDC
325/0	325015​	Grey Unbranded	Willesden PRDC

Just a few corrections to this list:
321342 is mostly scrapped at Newport Docks. 321341/419 are also both at Willesden Railnet Reception.

 

[XCTurbostar]

Many thanks @DBS92042