Originally Posted by
felixflyer
Saying that if this was a freight airport and that freight travelled on the railway at night it wouldn't really matter whether it was HS or not.
Trouble is, Manston isn't actually on the railway. You would either need to build a spur from the Canterbury-Ramsgate line (a mile or two I would guess, depending on start / finish point) or build a new rail / road freight interchange on the existing line and truck the freight a short distance to the airport before unloading it again. Perhaps not the most efficient way of doing things.
In any case, is there really a market for rail / air freight transfer? My feeling is that the two modes of transport serve quite different freight markets.