#db cargo

010 | Slow TV | Only Yard |

Sometimes I wish I still used Twitter (until I remember what that place was like), because some news items just deserve immediate "holy shit" commentary. Like this. DB Cargo UK is getting rid of most of its remaining fleet of electric locomotives, and replacing them with diesels with "sustainable" fuels. They call it a bold decision, but they make it clear that this is due to market forces.

This decision will increase carbon dioxide emissions from the British rail sector, at the same time as the British government has given out new licenses for drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea. That little country is insistent on making global warming worse, not better.

It is easy to criticise DB Cargo UK for this decision, and I think we should, especially us German tax payers who ultimately own this company. I don't care if this is a good economic decision, it is bad globally.

But at the same time we must also place a lot of blame with the British government. The UK famously has way too little rail electrification. Only a few big mainlines are electrified, and those are so busy with passenger trains that freight often can't use them all that much anyway. New electrification projects either haven't happened at all or have been severely cut back (e.g. the Great Western Mainline which is still not fully electrified), and various conservative governments have said, "biofuel is way cheaper than electrification in the short term, so we should do that" for years now.

Over the past 25 years, literally thousands of new electric locomotives have been built by Bombardier (now Alstom) and Siemens for the European continent. There are entire websites dedicated to listing all of them. And none of those operate in the UK.

The total number of new UK electric freight locomotives in the past 25 years is 10 (with sixty more on order), none of which were run by DB Cargo UK. Compare that to 500 new diesel locomotives (class 66 alone) over the same time frame, many of which are run by DB Cargo UK (Also compare that to 400 new electrics for Austria alone, divided between class 1016, 1116, 1216 and 1293).

The class 90 electrics that DB Cargo UK is getting rid of are from the late 1980s, and at 30 years, they are getting on in age, with more and more maintenance required. Getting rid of them isn't weird, weird is that they're being replaced with diesels instead of electrics. And if the UK government isn't willing to spend the money on the necessary infrastructure, then more diesel locomotives rather than fewer is inevitable.

This is nowhere near the first of these announcements, by the way. Plenty of other British rail companies have gotten rid of some or all of their electrics already. Even DB Cargo UK has sold some of their machines before this. You will find a lot of former British machines in Romania or Hungary, which have the same electrification system, and crucially, enough electrified lines where you can make good use of these machines.