The Port of Tilbury out beyond the east of London is being highlighted as a beneficiary of HS2 when it opens, even though it’s nowhere near HS2.
HS2 is ramping up the campaign to inform people that HS2 is really rather less about the HS and very much more about adding capacity to the railways so that more of the non-HS trains can fit onto the tracks.
And Tilbury has a lot of very long and very slow trains — freight trains, bringing in goods and sending out exports.
When you have a rail network that is already bursting at the seams carrying passengers, it’s harder to squeeze in more freight trains, and that means more freight has to be carried by roads instead.
Road freight has the advantage of door-to-door capabilities, but for long-distance deliveries, it’s about three times worse in terms of CO2 emissions than doing the same delivery by rail. With the rise over the past decade or so of massive logistics hubs for retail and home shopping, freight by rail is therefore seeing a welcome increase in demand.
A freight train can carry the same cargo load as 76 lorries.
Tesco by train (c) HS2
The difficulty is fitting more freight trains onto the network, especially the heavily routes from London northwards.
As previously shown, the main purpose of HS2 is to create more space on the railways — which seems slightly obvious, more railway track means more space. But as HS2 is going to be almost exclusively for intercity trains, that means all the intercity trains on the existing commuter routes vanish.
That’s loads more capacity for the daily commuter travelling to work, and more space for freight trains – which in turn means fewer lorries on the roads.
In advance of HS2’s opening, the Port of Tilbury is building a new cargo terminal nearby with a dedicated railway freight facility – Tilbury 2. This will be able to handle trains up to 775 metres long (nearly double the length of an HS2 train) and will handle bulk cargo such as aggregates, spoil – and expand an existing cut glass facility operated by URM Glass that collects glass for recycling from across the UK, processed then sent to Cheshire for converting back into usable glass bottles.
You could say that HS2 will it easier and cheaper to boost glass recycling in the UK – which isn’t the normal sort of HS2 headline that people read.
“This will be able to handle trains up to 775 metres long (nearly double the length of an HS2 train)”
Is a HS2 train not 200m long (or 400m for a double unit working), or have I misremembered? In which case it is nearly 4x the length
Hs2 trains from London to Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester will be 400 metres, services to Liverpool/Preston , Glasgow/Edinburgh, Leeds/Sheffield and York/Sheffield will be 2×200 metre trains joined together until Crewe, Carlisle and East Midlands Hub respectively.
The article does not state how many MORE freight trains will access Tilbury thanks to HS2 (or how many more lorries will be taken off the road) than without HS2. Are there firm plans or contracts or is this just wishful thinking?
Naturally, as HS2 won’t open for many years it would be far too early to be signing confirmed contracts for new train movements, especially as Network Rail isn’t going to do that yet anyway — but as noted, an entirely new railway hub is being built so that the port can benefit from additional railway access when HS2 is open.
Do you really think that HS2 would go to Tilbury. Unless a new rail link is to be built linking HS2 with HS1 and a new link onto the c2c line onto Port of Tilbury. I don’t think that’s possible. But a new freight service is to start from Liverpool Street to London Gateway that is to be franchised by Orion High Speed Logistics using Class 319 EMUs that could have batteries fitted or a on-board diesel engine (similar to Class 769).
The whole point of the article is that even though HS2 doesn’t go to Tilbury, the port town still benefits from HS2.
When HS2 opens a lot of express trains on the West Coast Mainline will stop using it – doubling the number of slots available for non-express trains. That will matter if going from Tilbury to Cheshire.