HS2 freight trains in Aylesbury Vale reach million tonne milestone

HS2 Ltd has announced a one million tonne milestone, referencing the amount of materials moved via its freight trains from an Aylesbury Vale base.

A small railhead near Quainton has helped HS2 take the equivalent of 101,000 HGV movements off Bucks roads, HS2 has confirmed.

The controversial rail project uses freight trains to lower its reliance on HGVs to carry materials needed for the construction of the new lines.

From the hub in Quainton, 646 trains have been carrying heavy items that would have otherwise moved between roads in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, and Northamptonshire.

HS2 estimates that the railhead is expected to welcome an extra 1,400 freight trains over the next two years taking the total amount of material delivered to around three million tonnes.

Adding that when including other tonnes already delivered by rail to previous railheads, it has taken a combined total of two million tonnes of material or 217,000 HGVs off local roads and saved 22,378 tonnes of carbon, the equivalent of 22,300 single passenger flights from London to New York.

Despite making efforts to lower its impacts on roads in Bucks, HS2 has previously criticised for employing road works in Stone and Wendover.

HS2 Ltd senior project manager Ben Sebastian-Green said: “We know that the local community are concerned about construction traffic, so it’s great to be able to get so much material into site by rail. Not only does it take traffic off local roads, but it also saves carbon and helps to streamline our logistics."

HS2’s main works contractor EKFB – a team made up of Eiffage, Kier, Ferrovial Construction and Bam Nuttall, manage the railhead in Quainton.

They worked with a team from Network Rail who completed a series of alterations to enable freight services to operate in and out of the railhead at Quainton.

EKFB’s head of logistics and security, Paul Bedford, said: “Moving material by rail was always an essential part of our strategy to help deliver this project efficiently. The original strategy was to utilise existing railheads across neighbouring counties and move the material the last few miles to site by road."