Railfreight hits back
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• Railfreight aims to win back market share from the haulage industry with the launch of three major services.
As predicted (CM 16-22 July) Railfreight has expanded its Minilink London-Glasgow container route into a nationwide service.
The Minilink system, developed by Swedish company Kalmar Lagab, makes use of demountable.box bodies which can be quickly transferred from the back of a lorry to a train, needing only a small area of hard standing beside a rail track.
Now Railfreight plans to offer Maxilink, a larger version of Minilink, which uses 6.1m x2.5m box bodies. Railfreight says Maxilink is capable of handling bodies of up to 12m in length and, like Minilink, it operates on standard vehicle chassis fitted with an air bag lift. Maxilink incorporates a side-transfer system, in contrast with Minilink's rear mounting system. Railfreight is also developing 2.9m Maxilink bodies, making use of lower rail bogies.
The third new intermodal system from British Rail is Trailer Train, a development by York Trailers and Trailer Train, a sister company of Tiger Rail.
Trailer Train is a specially adapted semi-trailer which can be lowered onto rail wheels for trunk hauls by rail. The road/ rail changeover takes six minutes and uses power from the road tractor unit.
Railfreight says that Trailer Train offers a fast, secure alternative to road haulage that is not limited by speed limits and drivers hours limits. British Rail hopes that the new services will help Railfreight to win back some of the food and consumer goods traffic from the road sector.
Mina* has already attracted some electronics companies, and Railfreight hopes for similar success from its Maxilink and Trailer Train operations.
Railfreight also intends to win orders from hauliers wishing to trunk goods, and it is optimistic that the new operations will prove popular on overseas services, particularly from next February when a high-capacity rail ferry service is launched by British Rail. In the longer term, these systems could prove popular for rail movements through the Channel Tunnel.