Can the Royal Mail trains keep on running?

After Royal Mail decided to stop using its own trains, Andy Comfort hears how the 30-year-old trains may still have plenty of life left in them.

In this article:

• Royal Mail stopped using its own 30-year-old trains, citing high maintenance costs and difficulties sourcing parts.
• DB Cargo and rail freight advocates argue the decision contradicts environmental goals and rail’s cost-efficiency versus road transport.
• Critics suggest proactive maintenance could extend train lifespans, keeping rail as a viable, lower-carbon option for mail logistics.

It was seven years before Queen Victoria came to the throne that post in the UK first started being moved by rail.

The first route to carry letters was the Liverpool to Manchester line in 1830.

This tradition has continued ever since - including the introduction of sorting carriages (later to be known as Travelling Post Offices, TPOs) as early as 1838.

It wasn’t until 1907 that post started to be carried by road.

Now it will almost all go by lorry, after Royal Mail announced in the summer that it would stop using its fleet of trains from October (RAIL 1014).

“Royal Mail will continue to use rail services to transport mail across the country,” it said.

“However, our own freight trains are at the end of their operational lives. The trains are almost 30 years old, and it is increasingly difficult to secure parts for maintenance and the routes we need to meet our service requirements.

“To improve reliability, increase cost-effectiveness and remain consistent with our environmental goals, over the coming months we will cease operating our own trains while continuing to use a mix of rail, road and air to transport mail to all corners of the UK.”

This decision was met with disappointment at DB Cargo, which operates the fleet of Class 325 electric trains.

Andrea Rossi, the company’s UK CEO, told staff: “This is not a decision against DB Cargo UK, but one against the economics of rail freight as a mode of transport.

“We will now be seeking urgent talks with the new Labour government, to see what more can be done to level the playing field between rail freight and the heavily subsidised road haulage sector.”

RailReview asked Royal Mail for an interview. It declined, but did answer some of our questions.

We asked about the balance between road and rail. Is rail too expensive because of the cost of the trains themselves, the train paths and the electricity?

Royal Mail told us: “This decision has been made in part due to the age of our freight services and the cost of maintaining them, but also due to factors such as the price of electricity increasing which has moved rail to be less cost-effective than road.

“We have found it increasingly difficult to obtain the access to the rail network we need to achieve our service requirements.

“We determined the best solution for the business and our customers was to use a combination of commercial rail services, our existing road network, and reduced domestic air services for the transportation of mail.”

Rossi talks about Royal Mail’s decision being against the economics of rail freight. If you couple three Class 325 units together to form a 12-carriage train, one driver can be sitting in front of nearly 160 tonnes of mail, powered all the way by electricity. The alternative is nine diesel lorries with nine drivers on the motorway.

One major factor is how much train operators pay Network Rail for electricity.

As stated in RAIL 1014, Network Rail pays for electricity up front, then charges operators. It expects the cost to reach nearly £900 million this year, against £500m in 2020.

DB Cargo is clearly upset by the Royal Mail decision. Not only will it lose a valuable customer, but this flies in the face of its own high-profile campaign, called Freight Belongs on Rail.

Its website champions successes across mainland Europe and in the UK. These include a Derbyshire-based waste and recycling firm opening a rail-connected metal processing site in east London, and one of the UK’s leading waste and resource management companies (FCC Environment) starting to operate from its new rail freight terminal for construction spoil at Cricklewood.

While the company may be licking its wounds over losing the Royal Mail business, the cost of running electric trains is no surprise to DB Cargo.

In July 2023, the company announced it was putting its five remaining Class 90 electric locomotives into storage because of higher electricity charges, and would instead use Class 66 diesels under the wires on the West Coast Main Line.

All this presents an early challenge for new Transport Secretary Louise Haigh. In her in-tray will be a list of demands from DB Cargo, starting with setting out in primary legislation a legally binding target for future modal growth and incentivising businesses to switch goods from road to rail.

The new Labour government has made no secret of its desire to get on and fix things fast. But the new administration has made no moves towards saving the Royal Mail contract with DB Cargo.

Only 3% of post is carried by rail, but it is high profile. This is ending just shy of 200 years of transporting letters by train. It’s the kind of headline which can stir politicians to act.

The media headlines from Labour’s manifesto focused on not renewing passenger train operating contracts when they expire. But the manifesto also shows that the new government appreciates that “the economic potential of rail freight is huge”.

It states: “…rail is a highly efficient way of transporting goods, with a single freight train able to carry as much as 129 lorries.

“The sector already contributes an estimated £2.45 billion to the UK economy - with 90% of these benefits occurring outside London and the South East.

“The expansion of rail freight is also critical to meeting the challenge of net zero: rail freight produces 76% fewer carbon emissions than road freight and reduces congestion by requiring fewer lorries on our roads. UK rail freight is underutilised compared to that of similar European economies.”

The manifesto talks of safeguards to ensure that freight operators receive fair access to the network. These may be reassuring words for the likes of DB Cargo, but the devil will be in the detail and freight operators will no doubt be pressing for that detail to include cheaper electricity and access charges.

What of the trains themselves?

The Class 325 electric multiple units (EMUs) are nearly 30 years old. Royal Mail says they have come to the end of their operational lives.

That assertion is challenged by Varamis Rail, which describes itself as the UK’s first high-speed rail logistics company. It operates a daily weekday parcels service between Birmingham and Scotland using adapted Class 321 units.

Managing Director Phil Read tells RailReview: “Varamis Rail utilises same-era trains as those of Royal Mail. With a more proactive and considered maintenance programme, it is our opinion that, akin to our own trains, there is at least ten more years of productive life left.

“With the ability to reach speeds of up to 100mph, their trains can not only deliver a quicker solution, but the ability to travel at these speeds makes it easier for Royal Mail to find capacity within the current rail network for its services.”

Varamis adds that “express train movements for mail and parcels is cost-effective immediately against road transport”.

Read suggests that discontinuing mail rail services contradicts broader environmental goals and commitments to reducing carbon footprint. He believes the decision will adversely affect Royal Mail and that he would like to talk to Royal Mail.

Maggie Simpson OBE, director general of the Rail Freight Group, says the decision by Royal Mail was very disappointing, and questions the level of forward planning, given that the life expectancy of the Class 325 trains should not have come as news to Royal Mail.

“Sectors change, and Royal Mail’s business has changed beyond recognition in the last 30 years. It’s not possible for rail freight to save everything,” she says.

“It’s about evolution… we’re fleet-footed about that. If we lose something, then we have to reinvent something else.”

In response to questions from RailReview, Royal Mail denied turning its back on rail transport completely, stressing it will continue to use rail, keeping the amount of mail moved by train under regular review.

With increased use of Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil to fuel its road vehicles, it claims to have saved more than 30,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent since June 2023. And despite the plan to stop using the Class 325s, it remains committed to achieving net zero by 2040.

RailReview tracked down the man who was the Project Manager for Royal Mail when it bought the trains 30 years ago.

David Davies told us the design life specified for the Class 325s was 30 years, so spare parts would still be available now.

He says a heavy overhaul may be needed to get more life out of the trains, and some systems would need to be upgraded.

“Road was always cheaper, but the reason we did the Railnet programme was because it gave much, much better quality of service, and the only way we could get close to the same quality of service without rail was to use loads of air transport, which was even more expensive,” he says.