UK: Following a successful 18-month trial with a single vehicle, on May 8 GB Railfreight announced it had agreed to lease 18 Ecofret triple-platform container wagons from VTG Rail UK for five years. Deliveries of the 17 extra wagons will run from November 2014 to early 2015.
The Ecofret wagon is designed to maximise the number of 40 ft containers that can be carried within a given train length. The outer platforms can each carry one 40 ft container and the inner platform can carry either one 40 ft or two 20 ft containers, with a tare load of 21 tonnes and payload of 36 tonnes per platform. The vehicle is carried on six Barber 20.5 track-friendly bogies purpose-designed by SCT.
‘The growing dominance of 40 ft containers in the deepsea market, infrastructure improvements at the Port of Felixstowe and changing train length regulations all mean that freight transportation demand is changing in the UK’, said GBRf Managing Director John Smith. ‘We want to make sure we adapt to this changing environment and improve our productivity.’
