The railway is one of the most carbon efficient ways of moving goods over long distances.
Rail freight offers benefits to the environment and helps reduce road congestion. It’s estimated to remove over 7 million lorry journeys each year. That is the equivalent of 1.5 billion road kilometres according to stats by the Office of Rail and Road.
But are we using freight to its full potential? Phil Read thinks not and is doing something about it by setting up a fresh new express rail delivery service aimed at moving high volumes of parcels at high-speed around a rail network of electrification in the UK.
If all goes to plan, then the Managing Director of Varamis Rail believes the service could be in operation in December this year.
“The plan is to use a fleet of electric trains and we’re looking at high volume, high speed, cost effective and great environmental benefits,” he said.
“As far as I’m aware there is nothing like this in the UK at the minute. The vision is to have a circular network. For the time being the concept is taking us from London to Doncaster to Newcastle with quick expansion into Edinburgh and Glasgow when it takes off.”
Parcels could be delivered from London to Doncaster in 2 hours, to Newcastle in three hours or Edinburgh from England’s capital city in just four hours, all by fully electric 25Kv EMUs – which are currently in storage around the UK.
Phil said: “One of the challenges is of course where the lines are not electrified.
“But the aim is to take trunk mileage out of the distribution network so we’re not looking at short distances. We’re looking to take a 200-300 miles distance out of the distribution network and really promote the concept of taking parcels off the road and onto the railway.
“We are talking high volumes and with there being no real technology out there apart from the electrified railway over the next 30 years, it is projects like this that are going to help with the decarbonisation targets.”
The company has applied for a train operating licence and is developing a safety case. Already available rail terminals or stations would be utilised by the business to reduce its impact on the environment.
Phil said: “Our application to become a new freight operating company will be put in the next couple of weeks. We’ve also spoken to some rolling stock suppliers as well so we know what sort of trains we want, how much they cost and how we get hold of them.
“We want to work in collaboration, we don’t want to be seen as a lone ranger coming into the market to take work off other people,” he said.
“We’ve got everything in place to fulfil a rail operation – we’ve got our requirements in place, train planning and we’re ready to operate from a headquarters in Doncaster.”
The project comes at a time when there is a big push by the Department of Transport to utilise the railways more when it comes to freight.
Just last month it released the document ‘Decarbonising transport: setting the challenge’ document which included details of freight grant schemes to support the carriage of freight by rail and water on routes where road haulage has a financial advantage.
It’s estimated these schemes help to remove around 900,000 lorry journeys a year from Britain’s roads. As part of this push, government funding has been increased to £20 million for 2020/21, a rise of 28% from 2019/20.
Phil said: “After the initial launch, our vision is to have a stop start service around the UK both up and down, east and west.
“We are in discussions with Network Rail and if we can run between 80 – 100mph, express parcels on the rail network will more than compete with road hauliers.
“Imagine a circular network – both clockwise and anti-clockwise – with 8 car trains, a stop – go distribution service. That’s what I hope, and I don’t see any reason why that can’t happen. The infrastructure is in place and the trains are there with 100mph capacity.”
Visit http://varamis.co.uk/ for more details on the company.
