Farebridge Freightliner Terminal

Description
Farebridge Freightliner Terminal is a large rail-road and inland container terminal that is located on the outskirts of London Bridge, just after Bingham Junction. It is the second largest freight terminal on the South Eastern Main Line, with Margate Dockyard being the largest. It handles freight movements of International container trains coming from ports such as Tilbury, Felixstowe, London Thamesport, Southampton and Margate or going to other inland ports and terminals such as Wakefield Europort and the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT.)

History
Farebridge was opened as a hump marshalling yard in 1910, just as the commuter lines as far as Twynersh Central were being increased to 4 tracks to meet with the main line's much needed capacity.

The first crane for loading and unloading the then new Container train services was installed in 1952 and a second one was installed on an additional loading was constructed and came into service in 1956. Locomovtives were sorted out onto their respective lines by means of a turntable. At the time, container trains only came from either Margate Dockyard or Southampton. Most of the traffic were coal, coke, limestone, fuel oil and bitumen trains.

The main container terminal was rebuilt and extended during the late 1980s with 2 additional tracks and 2 additional loading and unloading cranes to meet with the increase of intermodal traffic to and from Margate Dockyard. The main marshalling yard was cut down in size and the hump was removed in 1987. A new bigger marshalling yard was constructed near Twynersh was opened in 1985 to compensate. There was a station on the DC line that served Farebridge FLT that opened in 1910, the same time as Carlton St. Johns. However, due to low usage, the station was closed in 1986. The platforms still stand today.

Services
Whilst there is no specific timetable for freight services running, the large majority of freight trains that serve FFLT today are run by Freightliner, conveying various intermodal trains. Other freight TOCs, such as DB Schenker, GBRF, Colas and even DRS, can be seen using the, albeit, scaled down freight yard as well.