The Rail Freight Group

Presenter: Maggie Simpson

Virtual Meeting via Zoom

A virtual packed house of members and guests from the UK and beyond greeted our speaker who is Director General of the RFG. In a very enlightening presentation she covered the history and aims of the organisation and the challenges and opportunities facing its members who operate rail freight in this country. It is a representative body with some 120 member companies. The aim is to increase the volume of goods conveyed by rail in the UK and they seek to influence policy to support growth. Therefore the group promotes and communicates. To this end it publishes RFG News (freely available via the website) and runs member events as well as networking.

Maggie ran through some statistics regarding market share and economic benefits to the country derived be sending things by train. She went on to detail the market share by commodity. It was apparent that in some areas demand had been quite buoyant, whereas of course coal traffic has declined virtually to zero. She feels that the future is promising although there are many challenges, such as the lack of capacity in some parts of the rail network. The RFG therefore lobbies for greater investment whilst working very hard to improve efficiency and productivity by utilising technological advances in signalling, control and rolling stock design. The evening concluded with a quite comprehensive Q and A session.

Further information is available on the RFG website www.rfg.org.uk