BR's Brum depot is open
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BRITISH Rail's London Midland Region opened its new international container depot at Montague St., Birmingham on January 20.
The depot, built during the past six months on an eight-acre site, is an extension of the existing "inland port" facilities at the Lawley Street freight terminal. Eventually it will handle a high proportion of the international container traffic now rapidly developing in the Midlands.
Inside the new depot, which is expected to deal with some 10,000 containers each year, individual consignments are consolidated into full container loads for despatch. Incoming containers from overseas are unloaded on arrival, and the contents cleared through HM Customs and made available for delivery throughout the Midlands. There are facilities for all Customs formalities to be completed in the depot, eliminating delays at ports.
Freightliner and high-speed freight services connect the new depot with Harwich, British Rail's international container service port, and with Liverpool, Southampton, Hull, Manchester and Felixstowe, all of which have container port schemes in progress. Similar links are to be established with Tilbury, where special facilities are also available for container ships.
The main building in the new depot is 160ft x 80ft, and is specially designed to deal with up to 50 ISO containers per day, for loading and unloading, and to provide berthing facilities for vehicles on collection and delivery work,