[IT letter] Sharp decline in rail freight

[Thomas J Stamp]

The other reason why freight became uneconomic was the ILDA strike. How many potential customers did that put off?

The argument has to be about ecominics so lets think about the following:

If a major road haulage company or two got their act together they could concivably hire entire freight trains to carry containers overnight from say Cork or Galway or Sligo to meet the ferry crossings in and out of Dublin and Rosslare. The idea would be to do so in a way that their drivers do local runs only, from train station in say cork to cork and kerry/tipp ect, and an agent in Dublin port (the port company itself?) does the transfer from the train to the ferry and another agent picks it up in the UK/France or if it is domestic freight a local driver picks it up from the port and delivers it in Dublin ect.

OTOH:

Cost of driver and unit to train station + cost of passage on train, including loading staff, unloading staff + unloading in uk/France + costs of local driver in reciving domestic station and delivery in that area.

Domesticly the same company should have both ends and therefore the ecomionic case basicly is down to the costs of running a truck, including all tolls and runing costs, depreciation, insurance, tax and all of that, against the train.

Internationally it is the costs of one truck, going from Somewhere in Ireland to somewhere overseas, one driver, all of those costs v. the costs of the above arraingement.