A UK railway company, part of the Colas group, that carries freight such as aggregates and timber and also builds, maintains and renews railway track and other infrastructure.
Colas Rail in the UK is a railway company with two sides to its work. It runs freight trains, carrying goods such as aggregates and timber, and it builds, renews and maintains railway infrastructure such as track, signalling and electrification. Wikipedia describes it as a UK railway infrastructure company and rail freight operator. Its freight work began in 2006 with aggregates, followed by a long-running contract hauling timber for Kronospan and, later, coal and steel traffic. Network Rail has been a major client, and by late 2016 Colas Rail was reported to be one of Network Rail's five largest contractors.
The company was founded in September 2007 as Seco Rail, part of the French group Seco, which had been acquired by Colas in 2000. In early 2008 it merged with AMEC-Spie and the plant division of Carillion Rail under the Colas Rail name. We found no mission statement or values in the pages we could read, so we have not invented one. In 2018, the company publicly called on Network Rail to give more certainty about future freight train paths, which shows how closely freight operators depend on the rail network's timetable.
In the UK, Wikipedia mentions the Mill Lane plant depot in Rugby, which came with the Carillion plant division, and a train maintenance business in Cardiff called Pullman Rail, which was sold to Transport for Wales in 2021. Colas Rail's project list includes work on the first phase of High Speed 1 and the West Midlands Metro, and the company has argued in favour of HS2. Its locomotive fleet has included Class 37, 47, 56, 60, 66, 70 and 86 locomotives, and it has one of the largest on-track plant fleets in the UK as at 2016, meaning machines that work on the tracks themselves.
On people, Wikipedia reports about 1,500 staff in the UK by late 2016. We found no staff accounts, culture statement or current headcount, and the Wikipedia infobox lists a French headquarters because Colas Rail is part of the French Bouygues group. Because we have only a single page for the company, treat this profile as a starting point, not a full picture, and check Colas Rail's own website for current information before you rely on it.
Infrastructure and freight together create a wide variety of roles: track workers and machine operators, engineers and project managers who design and run rail projects, signalling and electrification specialists, planners, train drivers, freight operations and customer teams, health and safety advisers, and finance, HR and IT. If you like seeing physical results of your work, such as a new track opened or a train running on time, or if you like engineering and construction, a rail company that does both freight and building can show you several careers in one organisation.
Website: www.colasrail.co.uk
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