How much freight is for Network Rail account ?

[Pen Mill]

This is a just a question of curiosity but it seems to me that a significant amount of freight movements these days is of an Infrastructure/Engineering nature, more so than say in the 80s.
Does anybody have a view on this topic ?

Cheers
Ron

 

[Hydro]

Maybe the decline of railfreight and the increase in general infrastructure investment just makes engineers workings more apparent?

 

[swt_passenger]

Because the nature of modern railfreight is nearly all point to point intermodal, coal or aggregates, there must be quite a large proportion of the network where the only freight anyone ever sees is infrastructure related.

 

[142094]

With the closure of a lot of colleries and industry, you'll find that these days most workings in an area will start at the same place. For example, on Tyneside a lot of different workings start from Tyne Dock but go to different places, so freight will be concentrated on a couple of different routes. Also freight these days tends to travel a longer distance compared to 20 years ago, but less freight is actually hauled.

 

[daccer]

I saw in an interview with Ian Coucher awhile back that NR paid the FOC's somewhere in the region of 100 million pounds a year for running trains on their behalf. If the FOC's generate around 800 million per year all in it gives you an idea of the percentage of their trains being run on NR's behalf.

 

[Hydro]

It's worth remembering that engineers/departmental workings aren't really "freight" per se, but are non-revenue earning as they are all for the maintenance and upkeep of the railway network. These workings cost the railway money rather than generate it. They're also more widespread, but run less often, than the trainload freight that dominates the UK freight network.

It also depends where you look. The likes of Westbury/Mountsorrel/Eastleigh will see a lot of departmental workings in addition to regular freight workings, whereas Doncaster will see regular trainload freight workings and occasional departmentals.