Pacers reprieve
Report advocates a delay in the withdrawal of Pacer trains in Yorkshire, to counter a shortage of rolling stock.
Colas Railfreight operated the first freight train to serve Spalding for more than 35 years on May 19, when 70803 arrived with the 2109 Aberdeen-Spalding.
Formed of ten bogie wagons (nine TEA and one ICA), the train was conveying calcium carbonate slurry for onward movement by road to King’s Lynn.
It was the first of what should be 24 trips that are expected to run every other week. Each wagon can carry 66 tonnes of produce, and thus each ten-wagon train takes about 30 lorry journeys off the road.
The train, which uses the old ‘silver bullet’ wagons once used on the Burngullow-Irvine route in the 1990s, arrives via the Great Northern/Great Eastern Joint Line from the Doncaster direction. On arrival, the wagons are shunted into the longest of the two surviving sidings to the north of the station, where the product is then transhipped.
Colas cannot take the train directly to King’s Lynn as there is no suitable place to unload it there, while March and Whitemoor were investigated but found not to be feasible options. Spalding is only 28 miles by road from King’s Lynn (and 71 miles by rail).
The wagons are left, and the locomotive returns light to Doncaster for its next duty. The wagons were due to be collected two weeks after delivery, allowing plenty of time for their unloading.
In the weeks prior to the first train, Colas paid to have excessive lineside vegetation cleared from the siding area. The last freight trains serving the town are thought to have run circa-1984.