The post you are reporting:
Hopefully both green issues and basic economics will one day see large numbers of containers hauled by train and distributed from railheads by tractor units instead of a multitude of tractor units hauling individual containers the whole way across Europe. I frequently look at the endless lines of trucks crawling up the motorway, each with a man dedicated to driving a load consisting of a single container, and wonder how long it can continue.
Railfreight via rail ferries from the Western Docks is a non-starter. Rail ferries ran for many years, finishing off with the Nord pas de Calais running from the end of the Admiralty Pier. British Rail built this railfreight traffic up substantially before the Channel Tunnel was built. Once that was constructed, that was the end of the rail ferry and the berth was dismantled.
Railfreight through the Channel Tunnel has been a dismal flop and decreased to far less than BR was shipping on the single rail ferry. Now that the tunnel is entirely French owned, Eurotunnel have taken steps in recent years to build this traffic up. At one time it was down to a derisory four trains per day. Fifty percent of the train paths through the tunnel were required to be reserved for freight so there is an enormous unutilised capacity.
With a fixed rail link running out under the channel from Shakespeare Cliff, less than a mile from the Western Docks, there is not the remotest chance of anybody going back to the tortuous process of transhipping rail wagons to ships and off again at the other end. DHB made a half-hearted gesture at pretending to examine the possibility of restoring a rail link to the Western Docks for freight, estimating a maximum of 5 percent of traffic through the docks might possibly travel this way, but it was for appearances sake only. They had Network Rail examine the feasibility of reconstructing the Shakespeare Tunnels to permit the passage of continental gauge wagons, which was costed at £40m. Nothing came of it and it is safe to say nothing will. There are no plans for a rail berth in the T2 proposals.
DHB did however miss a trick in not leaving a connection from the mainline into the cruise terminals. This could have enabled cruise passengers to arrive by heritage trains pulled by steam locos and would have been a wonderful start or end to a cruise. There would also be the possibility of using high speed trains to convey cruise passengers direct from London to their waiting cruise ship, possibly special boat trains as in days of yore, utilising the unwanted high speed sets presently sitting around in sidings or utilising other units outside the rush hours.
