New freight flows from Liverpool docks investment

[flixtonman]

Very much an ignorant novice on here, so your patience is appreciated. What are the arguments against more freight services being pathed overnight [e.g between midnight and 6am] for those freight journeys which might comfortably be completed within those hours?

 

[Dr Hoo]

^^^
A couple of very straightforward ones are that lines are far more prone to being closed overnight for engineering work, leading to regular disruption and diversions (especially now that there are virtually no parcels, newspaper trains or mail trains that 'must' run to regular schedules).

Freight assets have to earn money 24 hours per day. If wagons and locomotives are only used at night one would need to have far more to shift the same amount of traffic.

Many terminals will not have night-time staffing and there may be environmental constraints about intrusive noise and / or lighting for nocturnal operation.

Many long distance transits take longer than 6 hours, hence have to be during the daytime at some point on their journey anyway.

A night-only freight railway would find it harder to attract staff, especially drivers.

 

[Greybeard33]

I think it's more likely to run from Guide Bridge via the Philips Park branch to Brewery Jn.
The route from Ashton Moss/Stalybridge to Brewery Jn is closed on Sundays for upgrade work.
Not sure why they are not routed via Manchester Victoria though - much simpler!
http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/H38738/2016/08/14/advanced

6E27 replaced the cancelled 6E24 http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/H30751/2016/08/14/advanced. The latter was scheduled to depart Tuebrook at 2032 and run non-stop to Drax via Victoria. 6E27 was scheduled to depart Tuebrook over an hour earlier, at 1915, but with a recess of about an hour at both Guide Bridge and Castleton, arriving at Drax an hour and a half later than the 6E24 schedule.

I imagine the variation in routing and schedule was to allow paths for diverted/altered passenger services on various sections of the route, and to facilitate more flexibility in timings.