Road meets rail
Page 17
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A £380,000 ROAD/RAIL freight terminal opened in Oxford last week could be followed by an East Anglian equivalent being planned by the same partnership of a leading haulier and a terminal operator, ALAN MILLAR reports.
F. C. Bennett and Barking Rail Handling Services have formed an equal partnership in Cowley Freight Terminal, whose road/rail transfer terminal at Cowley was opened last week by Junior Transport Minister David Mitchell.
The terminal is the latest to qualify for a Section 8 private facilities grant worth £185,000, as it is estimated that it will take 10,000 lorry movements off the roads of Oxfordshire every year.
Indeed, Mr Mitchell, whose enthusiasm for Section 8 grants has been reflected by a growing number being authorised, made his views very clear at the opening ceremony by saying: "This Government cares about the environment. We are concerned about juggernauts thundering through villages and we want to do something about it."
While by-passes helped to some extent, Mr Mitchell said the rail grants reinforced the environmental advantage of freight being sent by rail. He said he was "in the market" for more projects, and said so far 142 Section 8 grants have been made, totalling £47m. The Cowley terminal, which has access to British Rail's Speedlink and other freight services, has an 1 8,6 0 Osqm (20,000sqft) warehouse, a private rail loop with covered loading and off-loading, two 366m (1,200ft) sidings, loading ramps and a range of handling equipment including a 40 tonne mobile crane.
The partnership is now at an advanced stage in its plans for another terminal, at Lowestoft, and is already having talks about it with the Department of Transport with a view to opening in mid-1985. It would be on the container base already established there, and would handle steel, general commodities, containers and Freightliner traffic. If talks with Associated British
Ports succeed, covered facilities will be available for ship unload, ing.
Barking Rail Handling already has a depot in Essex, and was brought into partnership with Bennett after Dargavels, a consultancy based at Twickenham, Middlesex, was contacted by Bennett.
Dargavels specialises in helping firms to obtain many forms of Government grants, and claims to have around 60 per cent of the market for arranging projects so that they qualify for Section 8 grants.
The result for Bennett, which already handles volumes of mixed traffic in Britain and to Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and West Germany, is that some loads can now be imported in 55-tonne Continental rail freight vans and distributed by road from Cowley.
Bennett also has been able to add steel to the traffic its lorries handle.
BR freight director Henry Sanderson said at the opening ceremony that Railfreight is serious in its desire to get back into general merchandise traffic in which it had ceased to become competitive latterly.
He looked forward to "quite a number more" Section 8 grants being paid to private sector users, and said that over 1m tonnes of new business had been won for Speedlink from road competition in the past year. "We have an expansionist policy for Railfreight and a growth area in distribution," he said.
He told CM that Speedlink grew from carrying 4m tonnes in 1982 to 6m tonnes last year.