Latest Rail News

Mervyn Paverd   18/07/2014 at 13:47

The Railfreight industry may welcome this decision, but local residents will certainly not! One only has to travel on the local roads south of this proposed development, to experience the abominable state of road surfaces rutted and potholed by the existing HGV traffic originating from the warehouses already situated in Frogmore, to understand why local residents are justified to be up in arms about the additional HGV traffic which will result once this terminal is up and running! The local councils appear to be quite willing to rake in the business taxes from these ventures, but far less willing to spend it on keep the surrounding roads in a reasonable condition!

Charlie Burgess   12/09/2014 at 17:09

In response to the fight against the rail freight terminal. Cllr Pat Stack, the Mayor in St Albans has said in an email to me that a football stadium will be built instead of the freight terminal. But greenbelt land wont be greenbelt land if a stadium is built on it. So a freight terminal may as well be built. And we have enough football stadiums in this country. It seems it will be better for the country as a whole. I am looking at it not just from a local perspective. The lorries that will come off the roads will drop off there containers and the trains will do the rest. The hundreds of road miles of road haulage will be cut and done quicker if the journey will be by train. In the bigger picture, hundreds of lorries will be take off the overcrowded motorway and road network on the rest of the long route to and from the terminal. Also encouraging more railway freight paths to and from the channel tunnel. This will take off and alleviate the motorways to and from the ports at dover. These motorways are always in the news for being gridlocked and over congested and motorway and road building is not the answer, as a former GWR man once said in a documentary on Swindon Railway Works; 1 mile of railway track uses up 1 acre of land. But 1 Mile of Motorway Uses up 40 acres of land. So when you consider all that land that will be needed to build more motorways, When its gone its gone. There is another reason to build it instead of building a dirty great dull and boring football stadium. The rail freight terminal will as I mentioned take off those lorries causing the problem and will be greener then overcrowded roads. And trains make less pollution then lorries, this would cut CO2. The Railways will actually make the local area greener then it would be without it. Railway will always be greener the roads.