Storms disrupt rail freight at London Gateway and Tilbury

More than 1 km of track was torn up by storms in the UK south-east, leaving no rail service at Tilbury or Tilbury 2 this week while DP World London Gateway operates a reduced rail freight service.

The disruption followed a train derailment that forced the suspension of rail services to key terminals in the south-east, including DP World London Gateway. Storms battered the region on Friday, and Forth Ports notified customers that no rail services would serve Tilbury or Tilbury 2 during the week.

What has changed at the two gateways?

Forth Ports' suspension covers Tilbury and Tilbury 2, while London Gateway remains open to rail freight on a reduced basis. That distinction matters: one notification removes rail servicing at two port locations, while the other leaves a limited operation available for some inland moves.

Neither notification supplied a restoration timetable, and DP World described repairs without a date for full restoration. Shippers therefore cannot treat either port's current status as a reliable guide to when normal inland rail capacity will return.

DP World confirmed the constraint while outlining its repair coordination. A spokesperson said:

“We are currently operating a reduced rail freight service from our London Gateway terminal. We are working closely with customers and with Network Rail to minimise disruption while repairs to the network are carried out.”

Hapag-Lloyd said inland cargo movements were likely to be affected, making the rail leg between port and customer the immediate operational problem. The reduction does not amount to a complete halt at London Gateway, but customers must adjust any inland move that depends on the terminal's constrained rail service.

How are carriers moving containers to road?

For containers booked under merchant haulage, Hapag-Lloyd advised customers to arrange road transport. Shippers using that model must make replacement arrangements without a published restoration timetable or an estimate of how much cargo needs to move.

That advice is more prescriptive than a general warning: Hapag-Lloyd directed affected merchant-haulage customers toward road rather than telling them simply to wait for the rail network to recover.

For carrier haulage, Hapag-Lloyd's inland team planned to discuss alternative transport arrangements. The German line warned that it could not accept additional haulage requests during the disruption, leaving shippers without an unrestricted road-haulage overflow for missing rail capacity.

The restriction makes the scale of the rail outage commercially important. With no affected-container count, neither Hapag-Lloyd nor its customers can size the road requirement. The inland team can discuss alternatives for existing arrangements, but the carrier has ruled out additional requests.

Can trucking absorb the displaced volumes?

Whether sufficient trucking capacity exists to absorb displaced rail volumes remains unclear. That leaves Hapag-Lloyd customers arranging road transport while the scale of competing demand for trucking capacity remains unquantified.

The labor constraint is not new. The UK's haulage industry has spent decades struggling to attract new talent, a problem that could make a sudden increase in demand harder to absorb.

The Road Haulage Association said it was “monitoring the situation and will support members however we can.” It could not quantify the demand expected from two key gateways being out of service for at least a week.

Any assumption that truck slots will be available at the same scale as the rail interruption would go beyond the information available from either the carrier or the haulage association.

What remains unknown?

Hapag-Lloyd said it was monitoring the situation and would provide further updates as information became available. It had not established three core measures of the disruption:

• the timetable for restoring normal rail freight operations;
• the number of containers affected; and
• the scale of any backlog.

Neither Forth Ports nor DP World had published a restoration date. The absence of volume figures prevents Hapag-Lloyd and its inland team from sizing the road requirement, while moving cargo to road offers shippers an alternative without guaranteeing sufficient trucking capacity.

The next test is whether road capacity can absorb the diverted containers when Hapag-Lloyd issues a clearer picture of restoration, affected volume and backlog.