A passenger train without any seats recently called at Liverpool Street. It’s not a trial of a new standing-only train, but a way of delivering cargo freight into city centres. Delivering freight into towns by rail isn’t new – in fact, until the rise of the motor vehicle and later containerisation of cargo, almost every railway station had freight sidings next to them. However, most freight on rail today is in sealed containers, and vans often handle the “last mile” delivery from depots to shops, or increasingly direct to homes.
However, while the rise of next-day parcel delivery direct to the home or office is a boon for consumers, it’s putting pressure on road congestion, so a number of companies are looking at how to reduce the number of vans going door to door in cities. The most common option is to use warehouses in town centres. Vans deliver to the warehouse, and low-emission cargo bikes and the like handle the last mile from the warehouse to the home.
But, could the railway, so used to handling heavy freight step in to deliver the lighter stuff as well? That’s what the rail freight company Varamis Rail is trying to do — developing in a way a return to the old way of doing things — trains bringing loosely packed cargo right into the heart of the city, where it can be delivered by low-emission vehicles to their final destinations.