Do trains transport much cargo in the UK or are most goods transported by truck?

Question

Is it like the US where trains are purely for transportation of cargo or are all trains mainly passenger trains?

Thanks for your answers!

Answer 1

I believe that 95% of goods in the UK are transported by road.  Nearly all trains in the UK are passenger trains.

Answer 2

Most goods are moved by road.

Answer 3

i agree wih r,denig luckily the government is realising that tool beeching's incompetence and is reopening railways. although in terms of vehicles road is more common, in terms of capacity its fairly equal. one freight train is equal at times to 30 or 40 trucks.

Answer 4

Most are moved by road, mainly due to export outside of Europe comes in by boat then loaded onto trucks and transported by road, stuff inside the EU is collected by lorry and is transported directly to its destination.

There are some rail networking, however rail is mainly a mode of commuting in the uk

Answer 5

A the beggining

Answer 6

Rail freight capacity in the UK is sadly underused, with many of the former goods handling facilities having been dismantled. At the time of nationalisation (1948) most freight traffic went by rail, some went by road and there was a also a coastal shipping traffic which has all but disappeared. The transport was better integrated.

Sadly for reasons already cited by other posters the network has been cutback drastically since then. The surviving rail freight traffic is mainly in bulk, e.g. coal for power stations, steel, crushed stone for road building (irony there) and containers.

Rail is by far the safest and most efficient means of moving both freight and passengers but road traffic dominates in Britain and restoration of the rail network to its former self would take levels of investment that nobody would want to back.

There has been some comeback though. Recently the line from Bristol to Royal Portbury Dock (in south-west England) was reinstated for freight use in 2002 and is reckoned to save thousands of lorry journeys a year.

Answer 7

Hi there. The Unfortunate answer is that here in the UK most goods are transported by truck. I am not sure why this is so mind.

Up until about 3 years ago Royal Mail used to have trains run arround the UK delivering post to the sorting offices, and on board the train the sorting would take place so saving time when it got to a major city, but they then cancelled this claiming that it was expensive.

The Eddie Stobart trucking company last year branched out into Rail Freight along with Tesco's so perhaps we will see an increase in goods moved that way.

Also Network Rail is in the middle of upgrading their freight lines from the Hull docks & Lowerstoft docks to encurrage companies to use the rail network.

Answer 8

I would only add the the following that the rail freight companies - of which there are now several - are actively seeking to increase the share of the freight market available to rail. There have been, for example, trials by supermarkets using bulk trains to carry stock to remote areas in Scotland. Even Eddie Stobart has a small rail freight subsidiary now.  New 'hubs' are being built for use by container trains where goods are transferred from rail to road, again for local distribution. The German national rail company, Deutsch Bundesbahn, has recently acquired the major freight operator, English, Welsh and Scottish Railways. There was a great hope that rail freight would be encouraged by the Channel Tunnel but goods services through that virtually ceased a few years ago due to problems with illegal immigrants from the Sangatte camp using freight trains to get into the UK. Fortunately at last there are signs of a move back  to Chunnel freight trains. The very real problem remains the lack of capacity on the network, caused by the Beeching stupidities of the 1960s. Things like relief sidings for freight trains (to get them out of the way of faster passenger services) were torn up, as were secondary lines - like the Great Central route and the trans-Pennine route through the Woodhead Tunnel. The expense of replacing these facilities is enormous, and the Government, despite all its lip service to stopping global warming, shows little sign of putting money where its mouth is. However, there are some signs of growth - the upgrading of the cross-country route from Felixstowe to Nuneaton to allow larger container to be carried is one.

Answer 9

Most freight is bulk, Coal trains to the powerstations, Huge 3000t stone trains from the Mendips and lots of Containers to and from the Channel tunnel and ports.

One reason for the lack of domestic freight is the fact that the UK is a compact country. It is possible to drive accross the country in a few hours. Over such short distances its hard for rail to compete with road transport for small loads.

By the time Wagon Load (ie sending a single wagon) freight is sorted and marshalled a road truck will have allready arrived)

There is a new Intermodal (container) hub being planned for just outside Exeter (I think its now passed planning and construction will start when the neccessary road links are in place) so railfreight is growing. It will be interesting to see what happens with Raillion (DB Logistics) now owning EWS...

Answer 10

There are only 1,000 freight trains in operation each day in the UK, compared to 18,000 passenger trains - So there's definatly more Passenger trains.

However most of the Cargo is transported in these 1000 freight trains, more cargo than is transported by trucks, with rail accounting for 42%, road 36% and water 22%.

Hope this helped.

Answer 11

Ok, the reason we don't use trains for freight as much here as in the US is because in the early 60's some idiot called Beeching decided to recommend to the government it would be a good idea to decimate our rail network.

The Victorians had built the most fantastic rail system in the world, but the Conservative government took Beecham's advice and closed all the smaller lines, just leaving the links to major cities open. This meant that freight had to travel further just to get to a train and companies found it was cheaper to send it by road.

Disused rail lines are a common sight and are completely heart breaking. The lack of foresight was mind boggling. When you try to use our roads now, you understand what a truly monumental blunder it was.

Answer 12

Most trains in the UK are passenger trains (with in excess of 1 billion journeys per year for the past few years), but rail is still a significant freight carrier.

In the year from 1st April 2006 to 31st March, the total amount of freight moved on the UK network was 22.2 billion net tonne kilometres (which takes into account the net weight of the cargo, excluding that of the locomotive and wagons, and how far it's carried).

The total amount carried over the same period *without* taking the distance into account was 108.2 million tonnes.

Answer 13

The main reason for the use of roads not rail actually goes back to WW2, where the surplus road vehicles were sold off by the army to transport companies. These vehicals went at upto 50mph most of the time - compared with 35mph (average) of rail (due to Government regulation).

Then there was Beeching, and ever since it's been a common perception that it'll take longer by rail (despite figures showing it's quicker) .

It's starting to turn back to rail - problem is, there's too few freight facilities, and freight trains are slower (but not by much anymore) than passenger trains, slowing them down.