How has Ballina managed to keep its railfreight while the rest of the country has failed to do so?

[GSR 800]

Aside from the obvious answer of political lobbying, this one has me puzzled. 

Ballina is pretty well situated, don't get me wrong, but it's not the biggest town, it's not a major seaport, and yet it is the only major railfreight terminal left other than Dublin and Waterford (Though the Foynes is coming back online).

Back in the 70s and 80s rail container terminals were dotted across the country. I'm well aware of the rundown of railfreight, its virtual elimination by 2008, but why has Ballina alone stood the test of time? What makes it any more viable? Especially compared to the likes of the Foynes, Sligo, Cork, and Galway?

It is noted Ballina has (and had) major industries and MNCs and punches above its weight in that category, but its far from the only town with such?

 

Edited Saturday at 20:29 by GSR 800

[Mol_PMB]

Rail freight is more competitive over long distances. It may help that Ballina is a long way away? 

[ttc0169]

Having worked in Ballina freight yard over twenty years ago and now only recently returned to take up a position there  - there are a number of major industries based in the town-the main one being Ballina beverages (aka Coca cola) -they moved into the town in 1999 and have provided the railhead with lots of traffic-and a lot more if IE could provide wagons and paths,

Baxter’s healthcare is Castlebar is another major customer as was Asahi,

IE continues to offer competitive rates for the carriage of containers to the above named customers and have had an excellent record with drivers and depot staff with no trains cancelled over the last twenty years. 
 

a few photos from last week….
 

[Mike 84C]

Way back in a far off time,about forty years! i ran a fleet of bulk tipper lorries taking grain to ports and mills around the country. I seem to remember that an article in one of the trade papers proposed on researched costs that rail could compete on transits over fifty miles. One of the problems was many mills had rail connection removed and the docks we mainly went to the dock railways were closed or derilict. So one can only summise that BR did not want the traffic. We had transported barley for malting to Scotland by rail for a number of years but that traffic also stopped. Hundreds of tons went north on Scottish road hauliers.

My experience was it was very easy to pick up the phone to a haulier arrange a verbal contract and fax the details. job done!

We also used rail to bring palletized fertilizer from Ince nr Chester to the Midlands and that worked very well but all of a sudden that stopped and it all went by road direct from factory to farm.

All rather tragic, I think that over here in GB it will take major reinvestment to put general freight back on rail and legislation to make it work. So I'm pretty certain it will not happen.

Gosh that looks rather glum!

[Mayner]

I remember reading somewhere that Coca Cola use rail rather than road for its Ballina Beverages operations in order to claim Carbon Credits which can be used to offset some of the Emission Costs on its global operations. It appears that there was little difference in cost of shipping by road or rail from Ballina to Dublin or Waterford Ports.

The Ballina liners typically load to 18 bogies 36 TEU (20' equivalent load) in this part of the World 30 Bogie 60TEU is considered the minimum required to break even.

In the past the Irish Government/CIE offered reduced freight rates to encourage business like Asahi to locate in an area remote from a deep sea port like Ballina. CIE operated at a loss loosing money on most of its rail services, for a long time the Government was resistant to providing an above the line subsidy to rail, instead there seems to have been an understanding that the Government would make up CIEs losses up to a certain level.

Rail freight was expected to operate commercially from the early 2000s after  the Government (possibly forced by EU) began to pay above the line subsidies to public transport services rail and road. 

One of the excuses by a Transport Minister (early 2000s) for not subsidising Rail Freight was that the Government subsidising IE to transport railfreight breached EU competition regulations, it was claimed that subsidising IE (a State body) to compete with private sector hauliers was illegal.

In the UK Track Access Grants (a subsidy) were paid to Private Sector railfreight operators avoiding potential claims of unfair State competition from the road transport industry.

 

Edited Sunday at 05:57 by Mayner

[David Holman]

Back in the 1950s when BR was still a 'common carrier', there was a lady living somewhere in East Anglia who made high end posh hats for the toffs for Royal Ascot. BR had to put on a 'hat special' to transport her products and there is a picture in one of Dr Ian Allen's albums showing said train. A ninety ton loco, one 12 tom box can and a brake - all for a few pounds of posh hats!

 Today, I believe we still have Eddie Stobart trains and Tesco ones too, but you have to wonder at the concept of lorries from Ireland to Europe taking the ferry to England, then driving to a Channel port instead of just sending goods direct by ship.

[Mike 84C]

David, i would expect the phrase's " double handling" and security to be used in the argument for lorries doing that sort of haul. I fail to see logic in using lorries to supply components, to factories in GB, that come in daily JIT flows from Europe. To me that just clutters our roads with traffic and must be the sort of flow that should be ideal for rail.

Back in the day, days of steam really, there was a daily parts train that ran from Morris Cowley to Longbridge. Who knows what it carried but there were always forty or so box vans and then it just stopped running!

As an aside last time I was in Ireland, I caught the night ferry back from Dublin to Holyhead. On the motorway from Cork it was very noticeable that trucks and busses were very law abiding regarding speed limits. As soon as the trucks and busses hit the A 55 in GB pedal to the metal and blow the cobwebs out the exhaust pipe. I wonder if that reflects different levels of enforcement?  

[Mayner]

I managed the construction of a large Warehousing and Distribution Centre in North Dublin about 25 years ago. At the time the warehouse was the largest in Ireland over 12,000Sq Ft & we ended up constructing a 4,000Sq Ft ware house on the second phase to store the output of one of the American PC (personal computer) manufacturing plants, total project was over I£12m in value built over 18 months

The warehousing side stored the output of various Irish manufacturing plants high value goods (mainly electronic & IT), before being distributed (exported) to various destination in the UK and Europe approx. 30-40' containers arriving and departing every night.

One of the more interesting aspects was the level of security with Satellite tracking of trucks (usually accompanied trailers) from the Distribution Centre to their destination in the Uk or Europe. In the control office I was once allowed to track a truck in real time delivering freight to a destination in the Netherlands.

Historically rails had a poor reputation around security and timeliness/reliability of delivery, fine for heavy bulky freight such as coal, mineral traffic or train loads of grain, milk powder or other products from New Zealand's dairy plants, but not really suitable for the high value exports from Irelands Pharma or IT manufacturing plants.

With Brexit its more convenient to send Ireland's high value exports by direct RoRo ferry from Dublin or Rosslare to Cherbourg or Le Harve avoiding the problem of 'landbridging' across the UK.

The less valuable exports by container ship from Dublin, Waterford or Cork to ports such as Rotterdam

Locally the dairy industry is set up to use rail with a small number of very large processing plants controlled by one dominant processor, in some cases bulk milk is transported (by the trainload 12 Bogies 1000T train ) from a small number of collection points in intensive dairying areas to a centralised processing plant or in the case of the Waikato dairy products are transported by feeder services (typically 8-10 bogie flats 16-20 TEU wagons) from a number of medium sized processing plants to a large warehousing complex for consolidation and storage before eventual transport again by the train load 30-50 Bogies--60-100TEU trains.

Irish dairy industry has been set up for many years to export its output by road using Ro Ro ferry to the UK and the Continent. Avonmore's daliance with rail during the 90s was based on importing cattle feed (Mollasses & Grain) through Foynes, Waterford and later Dublin ports with minimal capital investment by Irish Rail attempting to transport freight at marginal cost using low capacity fully or almost fully depreciated rolling stock.

[Mayner]

David's comments about the railways Common Carrier obligations were the railways & possibly CIE & UTA road services were obliged to accept and transport all goods at a fixed Published rate is an interesting one. Internationally the ending of the railways 'Common Carrier' obligations (CIE 1958?) and the later de-regulation/liberalisation of road transport were significant turning points in the large scale shift from rail to road transportation and the shift of rail from a retail customer faced operation to a wholesale business that transport very large Volumes/Tonnages of freight for a small number of large customers.

The railways lobbied to be relieved of their common carrier obligations which like David's example of the lady that manufactured 'posh hats" obliged a common carrier to accept all traffic offered at the published rate even if it was loss making, the flip side of the coin was that the railways were prohibited from offering discounted or reduced rates to high volume customers. Although CIE largely retained its steam era railway with a large number of small stations following the ending of its common carrier status CIE largely focused on attracting and retaining high volume customers by offering discounted rates for large customers such as Irish Cement, NET, Guinness and shipping companies like Bell who used CIE as its Irish distribution system. The shift to Block train operation ended the days of wagon load where a farmer or a merchant would buy a wagon load of fertiliser or cement to unload at the local station at his own leisure, largely ending that connection between the customer and local staff. 

There was the story of the local station Agent in New Zealand phoning customers to let them know their goods had arrived at the station, then later delivering and collecting sundries traffic from local homes and businesses for shipping for overnight delivery the next day. Phone and telex but all admin was paper based.

Irish Rail probably managed to hold on to its relatively extensive railfreight network for so long because of CIEs almost monopoly position with surface transport and very strict licensing of road transport. Because of the difficulty in registering a Licensed Haulage business, many Irish companies and Multinationals operating in Ireland owned their own transport fleets and were internationally renowned for their efficiency.

The final nail in the coffin of Irish Railfreight was the de-regulation/opening up of the Irish Road haulage industry making it attractive for multi-national and Irish owned transport and logistics businesses such as TNT, Irish Express Cargo to enter the industry quickly wiping out Irish Rails Sundries and Individual Container services. the remaining large shippers such as Guinness and Cement Limited shifted to road apparently as a result of a significant increase in freight rates when their existing (long term?) contracts came due for renewal in the mid 2000s.