page_title: Rail freight in Great Britain
section_title: Early 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Rail freight in Great Britain / History / Early 20th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Down freight on the WCML approaching Carnforth. View SW, towards Lancaster, Preston and the South; ex-London &amp; North Western West Coast Main Line. The train is on the Down Goods line and is headed by LMS 4F 0-6-0 No. 44300, which is carrying the prominent yellow stripes on the cabsides that all steam locomotives had to bear when working on the Western Division once main-line electrification began
context_page_description: The railway network in Great Britain has been used to transport goods of various types and in varying volumes since the early 19th century. Network Rail, which owns and maintains the network, aims to increase the amount of goods carried by rail. In 2015-16 Britain's railways moved 17.8 billion net tonne kilometres, a 20% fall compared to 2014-15. Coal accounted for 13.1% of goods transport in Britain, down considerably from previous years. There are no goods transported by railway in Northern Ireland.
context_section_description: The First World War was dubbed the "Railway War" at the time.  Indeed, thousands of tonnes of munitions and supplies were distributed from all over Great Britain to ports in the South East of England for shipping to France and the Front Line. Due to pre-war inefficiencies in the rail goods transport, a number of economisation programmes were needed to allow the railways to meet with the huge demand that was being put on their services. The Common User Agreement for wagon usage and regulation of coal services through the Coal Transport Act of 1917 are examples of such programmes, which enabled better utilisation of railway assets across the industry.  The success of such schemes was entirely down to the collaboration of more than 100 railway companies, who abandoned the fierce competition of the pre-war years to work together in the national interest. In no sector was this more obvious than in rail goods transport.
  During the Second World War, vast quantities of materials were moved around Britain by rail. During the early stages of the war, goods trains ran to rural stations in Norfolk to enable airfields to be constructed. In 1944, 500 special trains ran every day on the network and over a million wagons were controlled by the government's Inter-Company Freight Rolling Stock Control organisation.
  Beer was a major rail-hauled commodity, but gradually switched to the improving road network. The complex network of brewery railways in Burton upon Trent became disused by 1970. Likewise, milk was widely transported by rail until the late 1960s. The last Milk Tank Wagons ran in 1981.
caption: A pre-World War II LMS Fowler Class 4F steam locomotive hauling a mixed freight train at Carnforth in 1964
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