BR plans for more fr ight
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IN A BID to attract more freight away from road transport to rail, British Rail has announced a £67 million scheme to take on more of the long haul load market.
And BR chairman Peter Parker forecast, at the launch of the new Speedlink enterprise this week, that by 1982 BR would be carrying between eight and nine million tons of freight a year.
Speedlink is the new name for the freight service known up to now as "The-modern-fast airbreak freight network".
Speedlink — operated by 75-miles-an-hour trains was not just looked on as a competitor for the road haulier claimed Mr Parker.
The railways aimed to be co-operators with road, and in so many ways, it was a stale debate — road v rail.
"Outside the clear cut areas of competition we can work together — Speedlink providing a complementary and economical service for the truck hauls, and road handling the complex terminal distributive processing."
But a spokesman for the Road Haulage Association said this week: "If the chairman of British Rail based his opinion on facts and not wishful thinking, he would see that it is not coertion which will result in each of the transport modes working for and not against the common cause."
By the end of next year it was expected that 50 daily trains would be running, carrying at least four million tons a year.
Well over a thousand new wagons were in use, said Mr Parker and a five year construction programme incuded a further 3,400. In all capital outlay would amount to some £67 million for the rolling stock needed.
Already Speedlink operated 29 trains a day and carried over two million tons a year of which more than a quarter was entirely new traffic.