On Sunday (18 August), DB Cargo UK unveiled the ‘Yorkshire Rose’ to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Drax Power Station in Selby, North Yorkshire.
The Class 66 locomotive, numbered 66050, has a livery designed to highlight the half-century. DB Cargo employees chose its name, and its naming ceremony took place at York station.
After the ceremony, it hauled a charity charter service from York to Wakefield Westgate station, including in its route a loop of Drax Power Station.
The charter service was in aid of Martin House Children’s Hospice, a charity supported by both Drax and DB Cargo UK. The service raised over £30,000 for the charity.
DB Cargo UK transports around 4.5 million tonnes of biomass pellets to Drax Power Station each year, running around sixty trains each week. However, environmental campaigners have highlighted that the biomass is timber shipped from North America, and have challenged Drax’s self-designation as “the UK’s leading producer of renewable energy”.
Drax points out that it continues its efforts to reduce its carbon footprint, recently announcing that DB trains serving the Selby power station are now powered using Hydro-treated Vegetable Oil (HVO).
The switch from red diesel to HVO reduces rail freight carbon emissions by up to 90%, which saves Drax twelve thousand tonnes of carbon each year.
“We are an integral part of Drax’s supply chain and have a long-standing relationship with the company that continues to go from strength to strength. We started way back running coal services and now run almost 3000 trains a year carrying biomass to the plant which produces around 11% of all the UK’s renewable energy.
“The unveiling of Yorkshire Rose is a fitting way to mark this momentous milestone in Drax’s history and I look forward to seeing it out and about on the network”.
DB Cargo UK’s Chief Sales Officer Roger Neary
Responses
your not wrong, and its virgin forest they are cutting down, not using recycled timber.
This is one issue where environmental campaigners are correct. Shipping wood all the way from North America in diesel powered ships and then burning it cannot possibly be ‘green’. If other countries followed this example, there wouldn’t be many trees left in the world. We might as well have kept some of our most productive coal mines going to feed Drax instead. The politicians fell for it, though.