In the past year, we’ve worked tirelessly with our freight partners and industry bodies to grow and support the rail freight industry.
It comes as we finished the first year of our latest five-year budgeting and planning period – known in the industry as Control Period seven – in March.
A strong start
Between April 2024 and 31 March 2025 – that’s the first year of Control Period seven – we helped move 16.5bn net tonne kilometres of rail freight across Britain. That’s a 5.1% increase in the volume of freight moved on our railway from the previous year.
It’s also a solid start to our goal to help the industry grow by 7.5% in England and Wales and 8.7% in Scotland by March 2029.
Take a look at some of our biggest wins in the past year as we work toward this …
Moving more supermarket goods
In October 2024, Tesco began its 10th freight service, running six days each week between Daventry and Trafford Park. The new service moves 600,000 cases of supermarket goods each week on the railway, replacing more than 90 road trips and easing congestion on roads.
The service is particularly time critical. About half of the produce this rail freight service carries must be moved from the containers to the shelves within five hours of arrival. So, Tesco’s decision to move these goods on trains is a big vote of confidence in the reliability of our railway. We work hard to keep the railway running smoothly all year around.
A new freight yard
In September 2024, we worked with construction supplier Ashville Group to create a new freight yard at Thorney Mill in West Drayton, Greater London.
We’re reviving an old rail siding as part of the project to allow Ashville Group to place more loads onto its freight trains. Currently, the yard only has room for 24 freight wagons but the new track layout at the siding will make room for 26 wagons. Freight operators can then carry greater loads and more trains can use the site each day – to boost the industry.
Making freight journeys more efficient
We try to make moving freight on railway as simple and efficient as possible so freight on the railway continues growing.
That’s why we began using a set of routings within Doncaster Down Decoy Yard in June 2024 to make freight services between Doncaster and the East Coast more efficient.
The extra track helped us lengthen the services between the rail freight ports at Doncaster and the East Coast by over 120 metres. This allows freight operators to run longer train on the route and move more goods without the need of additional services.
Digitalising to support freight
In September 2024, we modernised the way we calculate the weight and length limits of freight services through a new digital system. It makes the calculations more accurate, easier and quicker to do – helping our freight partners move more goods by train.
Previously we calculated these limits using paper documents and simple worksheets – a process that could take as long as 30 minutes every time. But moving these records to an online platform has made the process more efficient.
Our team working on the project even won rail team of the year at the 2024 RailStaff awards. The RailStaff awards began in 2007 to celebrate the work people and teams do within the rail industry. Our win recognised the complexity of the project and its importance in the industry.
Express freight services
In the past few years, we’ve helped train operator East Midlands Railway trial and move small parcels on its passenger trains.
Its express freight service fully began in May 2024 and runs daily between London St Pancras International and Sheffield station. Small packages are put in empty spaces on the trains and moved as part of normal train services.
Moving freight in this way has lots of benefits, including being more sustainable and quicker than moving goods on the road. It also helps us move even more freight on our railway efficiently and without any disruption to your journeys.
