Request for help and support - we need to advocate reinstatement and new build of duplicate rail lines in some places.

I would like to request any photos of freight trains on the current modern railway network anywhere. Please send me Jpegs with dates and captions for me to use for ERTA purposes beit newsletter but also a dedicated pamphlet on the Solent-Midlands freight route which currently goes Southampton-Reading-Oxford-Birmingham. Any specific pictures of freight on that route would be very welcome please. 

The report https://www.networkrail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Solent-to-the-Midlands-Multimodal-Freight-Strategy-Phase-1-June-2021.pdf offers a window demanding more capacity on existing routes but also we need some of our duplicate routes back or to be new built to enable more not just by default, but instigative of nature and demand. For much 'fashion' about carbon emissions on and off the rails, but it should be born in mind that one locomotive can take 14+ juggernaut lorries off the roads and that frees up loads of emissions, tail-pipes, congestion, which exacerbates emissions and other benefits like road wear and tear, congestion reduction, quicker end to end timings and costs reduced generally. So rail should be a natural choice over roads and growth of capacity and duplicate routes to busy core routes, should be seen as sensical and logical. Yet 2050 is mooted as the time for 'all singing, all dancing' whereas irreversible climate change is benchmarked at a cut off of 2030! See: https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/ga12131.doc.htm

More positively, the report references the East-West Rail corridor and says "This will provide additional freight paths from the Oxford corridor to East-West Rail. This will provide a new route from the Solent, the Midland Main Line and East Coast Main Line. This may open up potential new markets that currently do not exist." (Page 17). However, we note that unless there is physical rail connectivity between East-West Rail and the ECML at Tempsford where they are mooted to intersect each other, the scope is curtailed. We need a joined-up rail network. Again, getting onto and from the Midland Main Line at Bedford requires capacity and remodelling.

Laudable as is, an even quicker route would be a new curve from the East-West Rail Link onto parallel to HS2 to beyond east Brackley to rejoin the Great Central Corridor and a new link onwards to Lutterworth and into Leicester via a new link at Narborough. So our ideas do commend themselves for more by rail and ensuring places like London and Birmingham get the freight destined for them, not excessively all pushed through their networks, taking paths which their own services (passenger and freight) need.

Any support is welcome to entertain please. All expressions of interest, support or photos we have your permission to use, to richard.erta@gmail.com  Thank you.

I am always available for comment as the principal ERTA Media Spokesperson. Not an expert, but committed to forwarding certain pro-affirma outcomes ideally, especially with regards to rail development, rail reopenings, new builds of a local-conventional kind. Tough decisions are needed now and the Government has a pivotal role to inform progress in a timely manner. Our website publicity page also contains a wealth of original ideas, thoughts and source material: https://ertarail.co.uk/publicity/