Not-so-fast Freightliners average 35mph
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DESPITE the prominence paid in publicity material about the 75mph capability of Freightliner trains, last week's national conference of the Centre for Physical Distribution Management learned that the current average speed was 35mph!
This was revealed in a frank talk by Mr Leslie Leppington, managing director of Freightliners Ltd.
• He told the conference that the original pattern of operations assumed an average throughout speed of 60mph. "In practice, for a number of reasons, this has never exceeded 37mph and is currently 35mph for the 190 trains, only one of which runs at 60mph throughout" Mr Leppington said that currently, road hauliers were beginning to feel the draught of the trade recession. For years they had managed to keep costs down by dint of using bigger and more efficient vehicles, and taking advantage of the greatly increased mileage of motorways to reduce running times. But unless there was a change in the C and U Regulations to permit a gross weight of 38 tons — an uncertain and unlikely event in his view — there was little additional scope for further efficiency. Tachographs, too, were not likely to be introduced easily in view of the great opposition to them by drivers and unions alike.
Mr Leppington thought there would be general agreement that it was a good time for freight to be on rail whenever it could be so carried sensibly and at least as economically as by road. The growth of Freightliner containers movement from 391,000 in 1969 to 640,000 in 1974, and a budgeted figure around 750,000 in 1975, with an increase in daily trains from 130 to 190, showed the value to customers of the service. A new venture mentioned by Mr Leppington was for a Freightliner development of the swop-body principle, known as Small Container I ntermodal Distribution System (SCIDS). This was a system tailored to customer needs involving a variety of containers of varying lengths from 6ft 7in to 24ft. These containers would be mated with ISO twistlock fittings and provided with legs. The delivery vehicle could belong to customers and would have built-in lifting equipment.
A new company, SCIDS Ltd, had been registered, said Mr Leppington, and this company would design and build containers to customer requirements.