European Railroad Discussion > Freightliner (and Colas) to the rescue

July has been a bad month for our largest freight train operator, Deutsch Bahn Cargo (DBC). After several months negotiating with the trades unions they introduced a new pared down roster on July 3rd and immediately fell flat on their face, with insufficient staff available to work the traffic on offer. How did this happen? Good question, not being privy to their inner workings I have no actual insight. In practical terms they have reduced the number of drivers and ground staff, without ensuring the remaining staff have the capabilities to cover the staff that have left. In my neck of the woods the crew base at Hereford has shut, South Wales drivers now working through to Shrewsbury, another 50 miles or so, where they turn over to Warrington based crew. But few have had the training necessary sign the route to Shrewsbury, result traffic doesn't move. Which is where Freightliner and Colas come in. DBC turning to them to provide crew and motive power to work certain trains whilst they sort themselves out. It's meant a welcome variation on red in South Wales this month, although what it has done for the reputation of railfreight is another matter!

1: On both July 3rd and July 4th DBC were unable to operate any trains to the Cwmbargoed coal washery, the previous Friday (June 30th) in an extraordinary sequence of events they cancelled, in mid journey, empties heading to Cwmbargoed to load coal for Hope Cement. By the middle of the following week Hope Cement was getting fed up and contracted with Freightliner for an undisclosed number of trains instead. Here's the first, running to Cwmbargoed on Friday 7th July, passing Bedlinog in the upper Taf Bargoed valley.

2: Having finished loading 66547 runs round the rake of wagons. This train wasn't unproblematic as a faulty brake hose was detected, these coal hoppers have been sitting around doing nothing for some months, and eventual departure from Cwmbargoed was some 80 minutes late! But at least it ran and Hope Cement got their coal.

3: By July 10th Freightliner had been drafted in to operate a number of specific trains, including the 4C95, the lunchtime Margam to Cwmbargoed empty hoppers, here passing Bedlinog just after 16:00



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/17 23:58 by 86235.

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4: On July 12th there were three trains to Cwmbargoed, two Freightliner and a single DBC, here's the latter passing the old station house at Bedlinog on its way up the Taf Bargoed valley.

5: Once again Freightliner were running a train for Hope Cement. Here the 6M77 is descending the 2.2% grade at Trelewis. 25 years ago this sylvan scene would have been quite different, to my left would have been the Taf Merthyr colliery which closed in 1992

6: As the previous week Freightliner continued to work the 4C95, arriving at Cwmbargoed

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7: At Cwmbargoed waiting to leave was 66070, 66416 pushes it's hoppers into the washery, passing its cousin which will depart for Port Talbot steelworks after 66416 and its train is safely out of the way. Coupling aficionados will notice knuckle couplers on the DBC set, whilst Freightliner uses screw couplings.

8: 66416 has cleared the mainline, 66070 will depart in the next 45 minutes.

9: Freightliner has also taken over the daily Margam to Dee Marsh steel train, whilst DBC get sufficient South Wales driver trained to be able to sign through to Shrewsbury. This was the first time I saw it, on Monday 17th



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/17 14:49 by 86235.

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10: Later on the 17th 66515 is pushing the hoppers of 4C95 into Cwmbargoed washery, the piles of coal are testament to Miller Argent, the mining company, being forced to stockpile coal whilst DBC sort out the mess.

11: One flow that DBC don't seem to have a problem with is that to and from Onllwyn washery further to the west. On Wednesday 19th, amid threatening thunderstorms 60019 works the loaded MEA wagons up to Onllwyn from Swansea Burrows, along with container flats which carry containers of domestic coal which is loaded at Onllwyn and shipped to Scotland.

12: On Saturday July 22nd word came through that Colas was operating the recently resuscitated train of export steel from South Wales to Tilbury, the empties returning in daylight hours as 6V62 and behind one of Colas 60s to make it really special. This was a flow that Colas had from December 2013 through to September 2015 when DBC won it back, only to lose it as export markets dried up on account of what was perceived to be Chinese dumping. 60047 is leaving the Severn Tunnel with the empties bound for Llanwern.

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Final three

13: On Sunday July 23rd the 6M30 bound for Dee Marsh passing Abergavenny

14: On July 24th, the 4C95 passing through the former pit village of Bedlinog

15: On July 28th, under threatening skies, 66414 approaches Abergavenny on the 6M86. It was still on this working today (August 7th)

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Excellent photos! Beautiful land to shoot in as well. My favorite was the second from last from the hillside.

Very interesting! Sounds like "DB" tried to pull a Hunter Harrison who is screwing up "CSX" quite nicely.. :(:(:(
By the way sorry for the rant, but thank you for sharing !!!:):):)

Nice shots!!

TexasRocket Wrote:
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> Excellent photos! Beautiful land to shoot in as
> well. My favorite was the second from last from
> the hillside.

Thanks, we certainly have plenty of scenery here in Wales, rather too much rain of late as well :-)

gaspeamtrak Wrote:
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> Very interesting! Sounds like "DB" tried to pull a
> Hunter Harrison who is screwing up "CSX" quite
> nicely.. :(:(:(
> By the way sorry for the rant, but thank you for
> sharing !!!:):):)

They certainly launched their new working arrangements without fully stress testing them. Once they're committed to letting staff go, early retirement redundancy etc it is difficult to row back. There's also a sort of collective optimism which develops in teams focused on a specific project, the 'it'll be alright on the night' syndrome. I've seen it with system launches, where proper end to end testing was insufficient or replaced by stub and scenario testing, which failed to identify bugs. A Y2K incident at my employer comes to mind involving a 3rd party provider of payment processing.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/17 00:03 by 86235.

Fantastic photos!!! Missed your posts lately. In pic 4, that house has a great view of the line. In pic 6, have any idea what is growing on the hill above the train?

Thanks

Posted from iPhone

CPRR Wrote:
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> In pic 4, that house has a great view of the line. In
> pic 6, have any idea what is growing on the hill
> above the train?
>
> Thanks
>
> Posted from iPhone

Thanks, glad you like them. The kitchen in the station house (which is what it's called) is close enough to hand the driver a cup of tea!

In picture 6 that's a solar farm just above the train, the hillside itself is rough grass, bracken and heather.

86235 Wrote:
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> CPRR Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > In pic 4, that house has a great view of the
> line. In
> > pic 6, have any idea what is growing on the
> hill
> > above the train?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Posted from iPhone
>
> Thanks, glad you like them. The kitchen in the
> station house (which is what it's called) is close
> enough to hand the driver a cup of tea!
>
> In picture 6 that's a solar farm just above the
> train, the hillside itself is rough grass, bracken
> and heather.

Wonder if the station house is for sale, I am ready to retire

Nick - sounds like the Southern management just moved over to DBC!

dwatry Wrote:
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> Nick - sounds like the Southern management just
> moved over to DBC!

It does indeed :-)

Awesome set of photos. I was interested in that they were using automatic couplers in one of the photos. I wonder if they will make that universal on European freight trains some day? Certainly would make the switching of cars much easier and faster.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

funnelfan Wrote:
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> Awesome set of photos. I was interested in that
> they were using automatic couplers in one of the
> photos. I wonder if they will make that universal
> on European freight trains some day? Certainly
> would make the switching of cars much easier and
> faster.

This comes up so often, and the response is always the same. In answer to your question, no I doubt very much that knuckle couplers (they are hardly automatic) will become the norm on freight wagons. Auto couplings on passenger stock are almost universal now, and they are truly auto, no groundstaff necessary. But our freight operations are very different to yours, lighter faster, point to point trains which are only very rarely split apart, they operate in self contained units week in and week out. There's precious little wagonload traffic left, certainly here in Britain so your concept of switching cars is a rare event. Not unknown, wagon maintenance for instance, but sufficiently rare to make a business case for retro fitting knuckle couplers to all wagons exceedingly unsustainable.

Oh, those are beautiful photo of some stunningly
beautiful country! So green and so incredibly
beautiful.....

That is a fascinating look at railroading in Wales,
which I know very little about. Thank you.

Re DBC: I see I am not the only one to think that
"EHH-itis" has, sadly, infected at least one RR
outside the US. Those with that disease refuse
to admit that there is no way to get 3 quarts of
milk out of a one-quart jar. Sad.......

I always knew Wales was pretty, but I had no idea
it was THAT beautiful! (Obviously I have not been
looking at any photos of that stunningly beautiful
land.)

Again -- thank you for the excellent photo essay.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/25/17 22:58 by Margaret_SP_fan.

I think Margaret that you meant EHH-itis, as FHH is the abbreviation in the UK for Freightliner Heavy Haul, the bulk freight arm of Freightliner

SOO6617 Wrote:
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> I think Margaret that you meant EHH-itis, as FHH
> is the abbreviation in the UK for Freightliner
> Heavy Haul, the bulk freight arm of Freightliner

My bad. Fixed it. Thanks!