UK Rail and Trains

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The move comes as Royal Mail’s parent company, International Distributions Services (IDS), is the subject of a £3.6bn takeover bid from Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský.

A Royal Mail spokesperson said it was becoming difficult to secure parts for maintenance and, after reviewing plans to acquire new trains, it was decided that using other commercial rail services and increasing road deliveries was a better option.

They said: “To improve reliability, increase cost effectiveness and remain consistent with our environmental goals, over the coming months we will cease operating our own trains while continuing to use a mix of rail, road and air to transport mail to all corners of the UK.”

However, DB Cargo, which operates the services, said the decision represented a U-turn by Royal Mail, which had previously committed to increase its use of rail freight to meet its ambition of being net zero by 2040.

Andrea Rossi, the chief executive of DB Cargo UK, said he was “profoundly disappointed” by the move to axe trains, first reported in the Daily Mail, suggesting it could result in an extra 10,000 HGVs being added to “our already congested roads”.

It was the subject of the famous 1936 poem Night Mail by WH Auden, and an accompanying documentary, which charted the journey of one of these trains dropping off letters from London Euston to Aberdeen.

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