Corridor 4 — the Ashport landbridge
Coast to coast without touching the sea. The service the company is named after: a box discharged at Ashport is on the quay at Dunmore inside a day, and never sees a ship in between.
| # | Leg | Mode | Distance | Circuity | Running |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | Receipt, plan and lift at Ashport Deepwater | 3h 00m | |||
| 1 | Ashport Deepwater → Merrow Junction | Rail | 216 km | 1.22 | 3h 29m |
| — | Interchange at Merrow Junction | 1h 30m | |||
| 2 | Merrow Junction → Ondermere | Rail | 93 km | 1.20 | 1h 30m |
| — | Interchange at Ondermere | 1h 30m | |||
| 3 | Ondermere → Thorne Vale | Rail | 137 km | 1.19 | 2h 13m |
| — | Interchange at Thorne Vale | 1h 30m | |||
| 4 | Thorne Vale → Dunmore Quay | Rail | 145 km | 1.22 | 2h 21m |
| — | Discharge and release at Dunmore Quay | 2h 00m | |||
Of that total, 4h 30m is spent standing still under a crane rather than moving — 24% of the door-to-door clock. Cutting a lane's transit almost never means running faster; it means taking a lift out of it.
A landbridge is the oldest idea in intermodal freight: rather than sail a box around a coastline, put it on a train and drive it across. Corridor 4 is ours. Ocean vessels discharge at Ashport on the west coast; the boxes are lifted straight onto the 06:00 or the 18:00 and run east through Merrow Junction, Ondermere and Thorne Vale to the quay at Dunmore.
The competing option is the coastal feeder, and it is worth being specific about why we do not sell it. The sea route is not much longer in distance. It is slower because a feeder averages around 33 km/h against a freight train’s 62, and because a box that changes between rail and sea pays a twelve-hour interchange at each end while it waits for a vessel window. Add those up and the train wins by most of a day, on a route where the sea link looks shorter on a map.
What travels on it
Roughly two-thirds of Corridor 4 is retail and consumer goods moving inland from the Ashport deep-sea berths. The remaining third is chemicals and packaging heading the other way for export. The service runs whether it is full or not; that is the point of a timetable, and it is why the manufacturers on this lane can hold four days of stock instead of eleven.
Booking
Cut-off is four hours before departure for a pre-lodged box and eight hours for anything requiring a customs inspection. Reefer bookings close twelve hours out because the plug allocation is planned with the consist.
Equipment on this service
40ft HC and 45ft HC pallet-wide. Reefer plugs on twelve slots per consist.