Beefed up CargoSprinter on drawing board: Rees

<p>A new, more powerful version of the CargoSprinter shuttle train was already on the drawing board, CRT Group founder Col Rees said.</p> <p>Mr Rees has retained the ownership of both the iron highway technology and the CargoSprinter train from the sale of the remainder of the CRT group to Queensland rail.</p> <p>"I’m going to continue on the development of the CargoSprinter," Mr Rees told <em>Lloyd’s List DCN</em> . </p> <p>"We are getting a new company set up and then we will look at the way forward."</p> <p>Industry response to the CargoSprinter’s performance was encouraging and a new version of the port shuttle and short haul train was now on the drawing board, he said.</p> <p>"Fundamentally we need a unit that is going to carry around 60teu," Mr Rees said.</p> <p>"It will double the actual load."</p> <p>As well as interest from industry players in Australia, development of the CargoSprinter technology is also being closely observed in Europe.</p> <p>"The technology has been fantastic, it’s been the environment we have been working in that has been difficult," he said.</p> <p>Australia’s inflexible rail industry focus on heavy rail freight, has made it difficult for lighter rail ideas to break through.</p> <p>"But we’ll never get trucks out of the urban environment if we don’t," he said.</p> <p>Once the CargoSprinter technology was refined and commercially successful in Australia, it could be sold to those countries where the sorts of high container volumes around congested urban wharves and terminals would make it "a shoe in", he said.</p> <br />