Friday 13 Sep 2013
Network Rail wins three awards from Rail Freight Group
- Region & Route:
- National
Network Rail’s freight team are celebrating after the company won three awards – including the prestigious Business of the Year award - from the Rail Freight Group (RFG).
The RFG said the company had helped to boost the freight sector through its renewed focus on working closely with business and developing new processes to improve performance.
The company also picked up the Customer Care award and was part of a team that won the Project of the Year award as part of a partnership with Atkins and Balfour Beatty on the Nuneaton north chord.
Network Rail's director of freight, Paul McMahon, said: "I'm delighted the efforts of our team and the company as a whole have been recognised by the RFG.
“Many people from across Network Rail were involved in that success and it recognises the efforts we are making to keep freight flowing smoothly.
“Rail carries increasing volumes of freight, which is vital to the economy, and we remain focused on improving its performance and improving capacity.”
One of the awards was for Network Rail’s Strategic Freight Corridors project - a specific way of analysing freight performance that looks at the end-to-end journey of a freight service as it crosses Network Rail route and area boundaries. The corridors track our customers’ key flows and have helped us to align our resources with those of the operators. The SFC concept has promoted a targeted investment of time and money in improving freight performance.
Opened in October last year, the £28m Nuneaton north chord saw almost 2 km of new track linking the existing cross-country rail route from Felixstowe to Nuneaton with the West Coast Main Line.
Notes to editors
The rail freight industry directly contributes £870 million to the nation’s economy every year, but supports an economic output of £5.9 billion, six times its direct turnover.
In 2011/12 rail freight transported 101.7 million tonnes of goods worth over £30 billion.
Over the next decade, we expect freight demand to grow by at least 30%, the equivalent of 240 additional freight trains a day, and by as much as 140% over the next 30 years.
On average a gallon of fuel will move a tonne of goods 246 miles on rail but only 88 miles by road.
Each freight train takes about 60 HGVs off the roads.
Contact information
Passengers / community members
Network Rail national helpline
03457 11 41 41
Latest travel advice
Please visit National Rail Enquiries
Journalists
Network Rail press office - National
020 3356 8700
mediarelations@networkrail.co.uk
About Network Rail
We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.
Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.
Follow us on Twitter: @networkrail
Visit our online newsroom: www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk