Russian and German railway experts started blueprinting a project to carry jumbo lorries by rail to Russia and the post-Soviet Baltics from other European countries

Russian and German railway experts started blueprinting a project to carry jumbo lorries by rail to Russia and the post-Soviet Baltics from other European countries, report Russian Rail Company PR. The contrailer transport project, under a tentative name of Lorries by Rail, came under debate today as top officers of the Kaliningrad Rail met a delegation of the German Railway Engineers' Union and German industrialists. Russian and German railway companies will pool efforts for a promising arrangement to carry huge lorries on platforms, Russian Rail PR say in a statement. The Russian Rail made an enthusiastic preliminary evaluation of the project, and work is underway on its practical terms. It will take a Russian-German joint venture, to base in Kaliningrad, centre of Russia's Baltic exclave, to get the project going, said Victor Budovsky, Kaliningrad Rail manager. German delegates passed him an invitation to appear at the next Hanover trade fair, due April. He will see transshipment machinery of a new type to put loaded lorries on railway platforms-a technique Europe has never tried. An initial three terminals will appear in Hanover, Poland's Poznan, and Kaliningrad. Contrailer shipments will put an end to congestion in the busiest highways of Europe and European Russia so as to speed up long-distance transport, and reduce shipment costs and environment pollution, Kaliningrad Rail PR said to Novosti.