Rail served oil terminal closes in Cumbria

It may not be the biggest oil terminal in Britain, but it is the only oil terminal in the northwest county of Cumbria. The Dalston oil terminal, just south of Carlisle, is set to close at the end of the year. The closure is a collateral effect of the imminent closure of oil refining operations at Grangemouth in Scotland.

Petroineos is not renewing a contract for distribution with a small oil terminal in Dalston, in Cumbria. That means the rail freight deliveries of bulk refined fuels will cease at the end of the year. The news comes as a blow to Colas, the operators of the oil trains to the terminal.

Freight on Cumbrian Coast

Dalston terminal is not the biggest rail freight operation in Britain, but it is a part of the community that bears its name, and the loss of the distribution site means a loss for businesses in the region. It also means the oil trains will no longer run from Grangemouth in Scotland. The Colas operated trains were among the few freight trips on the Cumbrian Coast line. Colas is also the operator of occasional alumina slurry trains from Workington Docks, seen here joining the main line.

The loss of fossil fuel traffic leaves the scenic Cumbrian Coast line with a different sort of fuel as its freight mainstay. The line is used by nuclear flask trains, carrying spent fuel and radioactive materials to Britain’s vast reprocessing plant at Sellafield. Carlisle based Direct Rail Services is the operator of those flows (par of Nuclear Transport Solutions). Although fossil fuels are hardly the most fashionable traffic, rail is well suited to the handling of bulk deliveries, and the loss of Dalston will mean many more road miles incurred to support distribution.

Rail served terminals

Typically, bulk fuel is delivered to Dalston by rail. Colas Rail runs relatively short, sometimes just 400-tonne trains, into the short pair of sidings at the terminal. The large VTG leased oil tankers seem incongruous next to the county road that runs past the terminal. The liquid fuel is then stored before transhipment to road tankers for final distribution, mainly to retail filling stations. Local businesses have expressed concerns that prices may now rise. The next nearest distribution terminals are in Northumberland, a round trip of over 100 miles (160km).

The nearest rail-served terminals are even further away, on Teesside or in Lancashire. The UK has just over sixty oil terminals, and around half of them have rail freight facilities – although the infrastructure agency Network Rail lists just under half of them as inactive. The small terminal at Dalston, which began life as Scottish Fuels, and is now operated by Petroineos, is the only one in Cumbria. Other rail-served terminals include huge operations like Avonmouth near Bristol, and Preston Riverside, and smaller sites like Prestwick in Scotland.