Archives
Freight News, Rail, Sea
XPO to restore Waterford rail link
[ June 29, 2020 // Chris ]XPO Logistics is planning to start a new rail service between Ballina and the port of Waterford from the fourth quarter of the year restoring a long-standing link for the east coast Irish port, according to a report by Tim Casterton in the Multimodal newsletter. The principal customer will be soft drink concentrate importer Ballina Beverages, but space will be available for other customers.
XPO and Irish national rail company Iarnród Éireann operated a trial train over the route in March this year, transporting a number of reefer containers on it to Rotterdam and onwards to European destinations. An inbound trial is also to take place shortly.
Irish-owned logistics operator IWT already operates rail services between Dublin port and Ballina and for a time also ran between Waterford and Ballina before deciding to concentrate on the Dublin route. In years gone by, Waterford was a major rail container terminal for Bell Line with services radiating from there across the island of Ireland but this operation ceased after the demise of the short-sea operator. The port is still rail connected and handles a limited amount of non-container traffic.