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Royal Mail Zero Carbon - more trains?


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  • RMweb Gold

A long my metro line we still have a bunch of RM sorting offices (local delivery hub)  close to railway premises. The “big” hub is only 5 miles down the road.

 

Question is, why are the local hubs still here when the big hub is probably highly mechanised in 2022 ?

 

If those local hubs are still in the future plans, then a 319 emu style drop off of cages in the early hours to these local stations for onward movement to local sorting offices , and using the same electric vehicles they use in the day time to collect and take to those local delivery hubs would remove several hgv’s that must surely be doing the rounds delivering in bulk to those same hubs today ?

 

In that sense, the exact same approach could be taken to the plethora of super market “metros” that also use home delivery vans during the day. (my sainsburys local once told me they get 17 cages a day and have no storage) and we have dozens in the area serviced by a fleet of hgvs.


All that could use existing station infrastructure.. ie a lift, and a bloke to pull a wheeled cage on to a waiting van… 


Forget sorting on the move etc, those days are gone, but moving pre-sorted mail in bulk between large hubs, and distributing to small hubs via a local station using local EVs seems much more efficient, and cost of long haul heavy duty EV HGV could be hugely prohibitive compared to rail… of course the ‘shove’ could be legislating HGVs out of suburbs.

 

 

Edited by adb968008
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10 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

 

A friend of mine was one of the senior Royal Mail managers who made the decision to stop using rail. He told me the two principal reasons they stopped were:

1)  A desire to eliminate manual sorting. ....

2) Moving mail by road meant that RM was no longer tied to valuable sites near railway stations. Switching to road enabled these sites to be sold for redevelopment and new out-of town distribution centres served by road set up on cheaper sites instead.

In other words "stuff the environment, we want the money".

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On 25/06/2022 at 19:00, The Stationmaster said:

they undoubtedly saw road as being completely under their control

That made me roll around laughing. I'll try telling myself that as a mantra when I next tackle the M25. My house to Cambridge, for example, anywhere between just over 2 hours and nearly 6 hours. And I've heard of worse.

 

As for longer journeys (Alnwick, Northumberland to Framlingham, Suffolk was a recent one) you're frankly in the lap of the gods. Allow all day and you might not be disappointed...

 

Yours, Mike.

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1 hour ago, adb968008 said:

A long my metro line we still have a bunch of RM sorting offices (local delivery hub)  close to railway premises. The “big” hub is only 5 miles down the road.

 

Question is, why are the local hubs still here when the big hub is probably highly mechanised in 2022 ?

 

If those local hubs are still in the future plans, then a 319 emu style drop off of cages in the early hours to these local stations for onward movement to local sorting offices , and using the same electric vehicles they use in the day time to collect and take to those local delivery hubs would remove several hgv’s that must surely be doing the rounds delivering in bulk to those same hubs today ?

 

In that sense, the exact same approach could be taken to the plethora of super market “metros” that also use home delivery vans during the day. (my sainsburys local once told me they get 17 cages a day and have no storage) and we have dozens in the area serviced by a fleet of hgvs.


All that could use existing station infrastructure.. ie a lift, and a bloke to pull a wheeled cage on to a waiting van… 


Forget sorting on the move etc, those days are gone, but moving pre-sorted mail in bulk between large hubs, and distributing to small hubs via a local station using local EVs seems much more efficient, and cost of long haul heavy duty EV HGV could be hugely prohibitive compared to rail… of course the ‘shove’ could be legislating HGVs out of suburbs.

 

 

Are they actually sorting offices or just delivery offices?  Our local former Post Office is still used by RM (it has a nice big yard to stable delivery vehicles plus it's easy to get an artic into and out of) but it is not a sorting office despite having plenty of space inside.   What makes it all rather ridiculous is that Post Office Counters are based in a separate building about five doors away and so two buildings are used for what used to be done in one.  I'm not sure if parcel Force still have a presence in the old PO building but if they don't that makes three buildings instead of one although PF's is presumably not local.

 

So not only is extra energy being used for buildings but here in the town they now have to light and keep warm, plus pay Business Rates, on two properties instead of one; a stranhge idea of efficient energy use.

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19 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Our local former Post Office is still used by RM

The Post Office building in our local town has everything in one location - the public counter, the delivery office and the parcels, with a large yard behind for all the vehicles. It was purpose built that way in the 1970s, I think. Nowhere near the railway station, however.

 

The major part of the building is now dedicated to parcels, a traffic that has increased greatly in recent years. Letter traffic is a declining trade.

 

Meanwhile the sorting office is in Southampton, miles away.

 

Yours, Mike.

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On 25/06/2022 at 10:39, icn said:

 

Most of my small parcels come by electric trike - does need a licence, but only the moped licence (which is easy to get) I believe:

elektroroller1.jpg?mw=400&vs=2&hash=694C

In fact they're sufficiently happy with this system that they're making it even bigger:

AvbkMl1H4Y38hNnWaKbJdd.jpg?op=ocroped&va

 

(There's still a van for the bigger parcels, but the more parcels go by trike the fewer vans they need.)

 

 

Now on to that nonsense about truly renewable electrons: even if it were possible, you wouldn't want it - there's no point in sending electrons (or rather the energy, because the electrons themselves don't move all that far) a longer distance to the precise customer that paid for it - you're simply increasing wastage (and thus energy costs) that way. As long as you've put the right amount into the network at the right time you're effectively getting renewable energy out - easy peasy.

Great idea though i suggest a few upgrades like a cab ,four wheels ,and a V8 engine

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On 29/06/2022 at 09:27, adb968008 said:


Forget sorting on the move etc, those days are gone, but moving pre-sorted mail in bulk between large hubs, and distributing to small hubs via a local station using local EVs seems much more efficient, and cost of long haul heavy duty EV HGV could be hugely prohibitive compared to rail… of course the ‘shove’ could be legislating HGVs out of suburbs.

 

 

 

There are an awful lot of commercial premises that take deliveries based in the "suburbs". I'd suggest legislating HGVs out would be impossible.  

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1 hour ago, admiles said:

 

There are an awful lot of commercial premises that take deliveries based in the "suburbs". I'd suggest legislating HGVs out would be impossible.  

They said that about making electric cars exclusively by 2030.. why should lorries be an exception ?

 

the economics of an EV HGV could be a catalyst to looking at other options but as long as diesel hgv is permitted nothing will change.

 

 

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13 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

They said that about making electric cars exclusively by 2030.. why should lorries be an exception ?

 

the economics of an EV HGV could be a catalyst to looking at other options but as long as diesel hgv is permitted nothing will change.

 

 

 

Ok I read your comment as banning HGVs (as in all HGVs) from suburbs. My bad!  

 

What I will say though is I haven't yet seen a workable, economic electric HGV yet. There are lots of problems with the weight of the batteries killing payload capacity, range, where to charge and of course cost.  Force hauliers to switch to even more expensive vehicles and guess what happens to haulage rates....and cost to the consumer.

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25 minutes ago, admiles said:

 

Ok I read your comment as banning HGVs (as in all HGVs) from suburbs. My bad!  

 

What I will say though is I haven't yet seen a workable, economic electric HGV yet. There are lots of problems with the weight of the batteries killing payload capacity, range, where to charge and of course cost.  Force hauliers to switch to even more expensive vehicles and guess what happens to haulage rates....and cost to the consumer.

Which is why the economics may swing a change to hub to station by rail, with local ev van pick up/ delivery, using the same assets doing home delivery by day, but at night as well from station to local office/ shop etc.

 

it’s not rocket science… remember those scarabs… just put things in those rectangular delivery cages and wheel it about between modes, in the same way they already are doing today, just subbing a train for a hgv, with a last mile EV collection from the station, using an existing vehicle they already have and use for home deliveries.

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14 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

British Rail Universal Trolley Equipment

No not Brutes, there’s a new kind of standard trolley (or sometimes a crate on wheels) I think around 1m square, of course you don’t see them on railways.

 

Brutes are still used at LGW, ex BR ones too and in very good nick.

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1 hour ago, adb968008 said:

They said that about making electric cars exclusively by 2030.. why should lorries be an exception ?

1) There ain't enough electricity generating capacity now, let alone all the overpriced electric cars by 2030. Add lorries to that and the system will presumably collapse. And planes and everything else they want to electrify - all heating systems in every building etc etc.
 

2) there is not enough rare earth metals and other stuff being mined for this electrify everything at all cost plan. All this is doing is shifting environmental destruction from oil extraction to mining.

 

To go electric for the UK's and just the UK's fleet of 31.5m cars would require double the current level of cobalt mining globally. That's just the UK. Lithium mining for batteries has increased >1500%, wrecking some of the most sensitive ecosystems on the planet, and requires 500,000 litres of water per 1 tonne of lithium.

 

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2 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Which is why the economics may swing a change to hub to station by rail, with local ev van pick up/ delivery, using the same assets doing home delivery by day, but at night as well from station to local office/ shop etc.

 

it’s not rocket science… remember those scarabs… just put things in those rectangular delivery cages and wheel it about between modes, in the same way they already are doing today, just subbing a train for a hgv, with a last mile EV collection from the station, using an existing vehicle they already have and use for home deliveries.

 

Can only think you're talking about just mail/parcels?  I was thinking about HGVs in a more general setting such as container, distribution and bulk deliveries. Nothing EV out there so far that will cope with those.

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5 hours ago, adb968008 said:

They said that about making electric cars exclusively by 2030.. why should lorries be an exception ?

 

the economics of an EV HGV could be a catalyst to looking at other options but as long as diesel hgv is permitted nothing will change.

 

 

The government has already done the same for HGVs with sales of new ICE powered HGVs prohibited after 2040 (policy announced last summer).

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34 minutes ago, 73c said:

Do you mean these? Known by RM staff as 'yorkies'

 

https://envosort.co.uk/product/york-roll-container/

Yes, and supermarkets have something similar (appreciate i’m blurring the lines between Mail and “local”/“express”/“metro” style Supermarkets), but both operate in a similar logistics manner today which I think could lend itself to rail.

 

As always it comes down to cost, these solutions wont happen unless its cheaper (by inducement, demand or legislatively) than the alternative.

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12 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Yes, and supermarkets have something similar (appreciate i’m blurring the lines between Mail and “local”/“express”/“metro” style Supermarkets), but both operate in a similar logistics manner today which I think could lend itself to rail.

 

As always it comes down to cost, these solutions wont happen unless its cheaper (by inducement, demand or legislatively) than the alternative.

The big problem with going to rail is where do you put the 'hub' terminals?,  Our RM hub is 50 road miles away in Swindon and is nowhere near the railway nor, I suspect, is there any land available there to build a new hub next to the railway.  And our mail still would still have to travel 50 miles by road as does the mail - albeit for a slightly shorter distance - for Reading which is also served by the Swindon hub.

 

Weaning RM off road trunking/end delivery office movement is a much more difficult and expensive job than simply saying 'put it on the train'.

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18 hours ago, admiles said:

 

Ok I read your comment as banning HGVs (as in all HGVs) from suburbs. My bad!  

 

What I will say though is I haven't yet seen a workable, economic electric HGV yet. There are lots of problems with the weight of the batteries killing payload capacity, range, where to charge and of course cost.  Force hauliers to switch to even more expensive vehicles and guess what happens to haulage rates....and cost to the consumer.

And just imagine the queues to recharge electric HGVs at Watford Gap services

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17 hours ago, adb968008 said:

No not Brutes, there’s a new kind of standard trolley (or sometimes a crate on wheels) I think around 1m square, of course you don’t see them on railways.

 

Brutes are still used at LGW, ex BR ones too and in very good nick.

The dimensions of Brutes were presumably chosen to fit conveniently inside typical railway vans of the era, which in turn was based on our historically determined loading gauge.  International traffic by shipping container was not so constrained, and we have had to adapt our rolling stock and loading gauge to carry the increasing sizes of container by rail.

 

If industry is using some standard size of trolley these days the efficiency with which they can be fitted into a BG won't even have been a design consideration.

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14 hours ago, black and decker boy said:

The government has already done the same for HGVs with sales of new ICE powered HGVs prohibited after 2040 (policy announced last summer).

Don't worry.  There will have been several changes of Government by then.

 

Oh dear, we seem to have lost the ball in the long grass.  I'd help you look for it, but I'll be in my 90s by then.

Edited by Michael Hodgson
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  • RMweb Gold
On 01/07/2022 at 10:33, The Stationmaster said:

The big problem with going to rail is where do you put the 'hub' terminals?,  Our RM hub is 50 road miles away in Swindon and is nowhere near the railway nor, I suspect, is there any land available there to build a new hub next to the railway.  And our mail still would still have to travel 50 miles by road as does the mail - albeit for a slightly shorter distance - for Reading which is also served by the Swindon hub.

 

Weaning RM off road trunking/end delivery office movement is a much more difficult and expensive job than simply saying 'put it on the train'.

Agreed, so you've highlighted one example that wont work.

 

But finding one that wont work, doesnt preclude the entire country from using another that might work in its particular circumstance.


i’m sure up in remote Scotland, HGV and Rail was precluded decades ago, a boat and a horse might be more appropriate.

 

The future may need multiple solutions, of which rail is just one of them…one size fits all no longer applies.

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17 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Agreed, so you've highlighted one example that wont work.

 

But finding one that wont work, doesnt preclude the entire country from using another that might work in its particular circumstance.


i’m sure up in remote Scotland, HGV and Rail was precluded decades ago, a boat and a horse might be more appropriate.

 

The future may need multiple solutions, of which rail is just one of them…one size fits all no longer applies.

But don't forget that Swindon is typical of the rationalisation. of hubs which has taken place - and its situation is pre-privatisation.  It isn't unusual for towns with over 100,000 residents not to be served by an immediately local hub.   There are - according to a Wiki article - now 37 domestic mails hubs serving the entire UK with, for example only one in South Wales (no others in Wales - presumably Chester deals with North Wales?).

 

So to recreate local hubs in say, for example, Liverpool would mean starting from scratch as there is no existing hub there.  There are no doubt local delivery offices in Liverpool and elsewhere but v could any of them be converted to something like a rail served mini-hub?

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