Freight / enterprise trains definition question.

[General Zod]

Hello,
I often come across the term "enterprise train" when referring to freight train diagrams e.g

"66006 heads south through Princes Risborough with the diverted 6X66, 02:01 Warrington to Wembley enterprise train with 60048 DIT."

What does the term "enterprise train" refer to / stand for ?

Cheers,

Zod

 

[Mintona]

Enterprise refers to a freight train with more than one type of load. For example, if you mixed a coal train and a steel train into one train, you would have an "enterprise" train. That is one example that doesn't ever happen, but here are some that do.
http://thegrimsheeper.photoblog.org.uk/p53161936.html
http://neil-gibson.fotopic.net/p53130863.html
You can quite clearly see the different wagon types on the same trains.

 

[thefab444]

They are used by EWS to transport various loads with a common destination or as the "bulk" section of a loads' journey. For example a typical Eastleigh Enterprise:

Containers from Port
Calcium Carbonate from Quarry
Fuel Oil

These are all bound for somewhere in the north, so they are taken together as one train to a yard in the north and then split into different trains, some terminating in the yard and others being moved forward to their destination on "trip" workings. The variable nature of enterprises mean they can often run very short, or with no load at all, or sometimes be extremely long. Services from Eastleigh sometimes appear to just be container trains because that is the main traffic, but they are still known as enterprise trains even if they only have one load on that particular day.

EWS have a so-called "Enterprise Network" which allows them to save money on paths and drivers by combining services.

HTH

 

[37402]

'Enterprise' is the name of the operation when it was started by Transrail back in the days before EWS but the name doesn't really give any clues as to the type of traffic; think of it as wagonload.

The 'wagonload' name gives more of a clue as to the type of operation as it involves small numbers of wagons being transported from various origins to various destinations via one main trunk service and possibly a local trip. By combining various loads that wouldn't be viable to run on their own over long distances, you have a multi-user service for a fraction of the cost to each party in question.

In operation, the customer will confirm with the FOC the quantity of wagons a number of hours before departure and train capacity will be allocated on a first come first served basis until the train is full. This is one of the downsides of not having a dedicated train - there is no guarantee that the traffic in question will move if there is higher priority traffic, however the beauty of the wagonload network is that there is often more than one way to arrive at the final destination through using a different 'trunk train'.

For example to get traffic from Warrington to South Wales;

Warrington-Bescot, Bescot-Newport
Warrington-Wembley, Wembley-Newport
Warrington-Newport direct