Smart Monitoring to Increase Efficiency and Sustainability in Cross-Europe Rail Freight.

You may not have heard of VTG Rail UK but this long-established company with headquarters in Brimingham is, with over 2,000 railfreight wagons, Britain’s largest private rail wagon hire company.

VTG’s wagons are suitable for 3 main types of business (a) the movement of materials in bulk (b) tank transport for chemicals e.g. lime or cement, fuels and bitumen (c) intermodal. This latter is essentially the transport of sea/road/rail containers and the VTG fleet includes a number of the new flat bed wagons. refers to a design standard which enables either 40 foot or 20 foot containers with a height of 9 foot 6 inches to be carried in combinations which maximise the number of containers per train.
In January VTG took delivery of 85 new Romanian manufactured box wagons to take advantage of the UK market for the transport of specialised construction materials and equipment.
Now in order improve the efficiency of wagon use and increase the sustainability of the logistics process VTG is to equip its entire European fleet with smart sensors able to link and build up into a Europe-wide telematics network.
The VTG group’s headquarters are in Hamburg and the sensors are produced by its specialised subsidiary company in Switzerland. It is hoped that the incease in efficiency will enable European railfreight to compete more effectively with road transport and contribute to Europe’s reduction of carbon dioxide emissions.
Picture from Railway Gazette