Knowsley Binliner
Ever wondered what this train is doing passing through Highfield?
This is the train a lot of railway people call the “Knowsley Bin Liner”.
It’s part of a regular waste operation between Knowsley and the Wilton Energy-from-Waste plant on Teesside.
Household rubbish from across Merseyside and Halton that can’t currently be recycled is taken to the rail transfer station at Knowsley. There it’s packed into sealed containers and loaded onto trains. Each train can carry dozens of containers, with SUEZ currently saying around 80,000 wheelie bins’ worth of waste are moved this way every week.
The loaded trains travel from Knowsley across the country to Wilton on Teesside. Once there, the waste is used in the Energy-from-Waste plant to produce steam and electricity rather than simply being sent to landfill. The plant can generate enough electricity for around 63,000 homes, with some of the steam also supplied to nearby industry.
The containers then have to make the return journey back to Knowsley to be filled again — and that’s the direction the train in this video was travelling today, coming back from Teesside towards Knowsley.
It isn’t a quick trip either. Freight trains can spend quite a bit of time waiting in loops and yards to allow other trains through. Today’s working was scheduled to take a little over 5 hours from Tees Yard to Knowsley, while some Knowsley-to-Wilton workings can take considerably longer depending on the route and waiting time.
So next time you hear this rumbling through Highfield, you’ll know exactly what it is.
Did you already know what it was carrying?
View the video here: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1ETUZ6tZg1/
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