Rail Services
From Tuesday 19 September 2006 Stobart Rail commenced a daily delivery train on behalf of Tesco, for which it already provided comprehensive road haulage services. Collecting Tesco goods from around the Midlands, the train runs from the Stobart depot at DIRFT in Rugby, to the Grangemouth Rail terminal in Scotland. The train then returns to Rugby, 90% filled by Tesco and 10% filled by Coca Cola - shipping the equivalent of 26 lorries daily in each direction
Hauled by Class 66 locomotives supplied and manned by Direct Rail Services, the train consisted of 26 specially designed new 45 feet (14 m) curtain-sided shipping containers, which at 8 feet 6 inches (2.59 m) in height are within the UK loading gauge. Stobart has bought 90 of these new containers in order to provide this service. The train travels at an average speed of 40 miles per hour (64 km/h), which is comparable with a lorry, although the whole process takes slightly longer because of additional loading and unloading
Over the three year contract, it is estimated the dedicated rail freight service will replace 130,000 lorry journeys and save 3 million road miles a year. Stobart has been given £400,000 by the UK Government and Scottish Executive to switch 70 per cent of its cross-border freight for Tesco from road to rail. The train will be in Tesco corporate colours.
In May 2008, Stobart announced a second route had been gained for Tesco, from Grangemouth to Inverness, to start no later than September.
On 30 October 2009, Stobart commenced a new, weekly refrigerated train service, operated in conjunction with DB Schenker, an 1,100 miles (1,800 km) journey from Valencia, Spain, terminating at the Ripple Lane inter-modal depot developed originally for Ford Dagenham, providing for the first time an alternative to lorries for the import of fresh Spanish salad-vegetables. The first fully refrigerated goods service to run through Eurotunnel, it is currently the longest train journey in Europe by a single operator. On the return journey to Spain, the train carries pallets for CHEP.
Stobart announced in May 2008 that it planned up to six new train services in addition to the Tesco contracts in the year.
Read more about this topic: Stobart Rail
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