UK: GB Railfreight has secured a lease for the disused March Up Yard rail sidings in Cambridgeshire in eastern England.
The operator plans to use the site for the stabling and maintenance of rolling stock which is used on freight trains between Middleton Towers and Yorkshire, to carry aggregates between the Peak District and East Anglia, and for container traffic from the Port of Felixstowe.
The site will accommodate trains of up to 320 m in length, and will operate in conjunction with the Down Yard, south of the main line, which GBRf already uses.
'We’re really very pleased to have secured this location', said Managing Director John Smith on June 10. 'It will help reduce emissions and save costs in terms of running several hundred empty miles each week in order to get our wagons serviced. It will also reduce congestion elsewhere along our routes and assist with timetabling flexibility, improving performance overall.'
The agreement was welcomed by Guy Bates, Head of Freight Development at Network Rail, who said the infrastructure manager had included the site in its 2014 freight estate acquisition portfolio 'in the clear anticipation that it would have future utility'.
