"Mike Roebuck" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 07:05:54 +0000, Michael Bell
wrote:

In article , Troy Steadman
wrote:
Didn't there used to be trains that instead of disgorging their
passengers at the docks actually drove (drove?) steamed on to sidings
on the decks of ships then steamed off Stena-like to continue their
journey across Europe?

When the channel tunnel was started, that thoroughly commercial
organisation,
British Railways, started a programme of bringing goods waggons into this
country by ship to build up traffic for when the tunnel opened. The tunnel
took longer to build than planned, so this built up to quite a traffic;

Sorry Michael, but that's nonsense. Train ferries were in use for the
transport of goods long before British Railways came into existence.
They only ceased when the Channel Tunnel opened, finally robbing them
of their reason for existence. You might wish to read George
Behrend's and Gary Buchanan's excellent book "Night Ferry" ; a superb
account of the history of these services.


I saw
a lot of Italian goods vehicles in Luton. But BR didn't live to harvest
the
fruits of its labours - and were there any?

It's ironical to remember how the pundits said that the building of the
channel tunnel would bring vast traffic and make British Railways safe.
But
as I understand it, goods traffic, like passenger traffic, has been
disappointing. It's strange how things turn out, not the opposite of what
was
expected, but at a slant that makes the forecasts and their negations both
irrelevant.

The train ferry services and railway-owned container ships were
carrying about 3.2 million tonnes of freight a year before the Channel
Tunnel opened. I understand the current figure for Channel Tunnel is
about 1 million tonnes. It was substantially more, but the problem
with illegal immigrants cost the railways a lot of business. The cost
of using the Channel Tunnel has put off a lot of potential business
too, IMO.


--

Regards

Mike

mikedotroebuckatgmxdotnet
It's heading towards the million and a half tonne mark now, I believe. Just
looking at the tonnage figures gives an understated view of the level of
traffic carried- some of the longest-serving trains carry relatively
low-density products, so that the Ford Dagenham - Silla train (which has
been loading 40+ boxes per day per direction) only GROSSES about 1100t,
suggesting a load of about half that. Likewise, the car trains are 750m
long, but probably load about 400t maximum. The stowaway problem dented
things very badly, but subsequently the continuing labour-relations problems
at SNCF have also caused the loss of a lot of container traffic, which takes
the short-sea route to Belgium and then goes forward by rail to Italy.
Brian