Border residents will know well the hub of trains, containers and machinery they pass northbound on the Hume, at Ettamogah.

However, few know the story behind the man who created it.

Mr Rees attributes his beginnings in the transport industry to his mother, Betty, who created one of the first taxi truck operations in Melbourne in 1954.

"She was absolutely one of the pioneers," Mr Rees said.

"Nobody was doing it at that time ... and they started with a little Ford tin van."

The story of Betty Rees was told by the National Road Transport Hall of Fame. She managed the couriering business with her husband, Jack, while raising their two boys, Colin and Phillip - paving the way for other women in the industry.

Mr Rees was seven years old when Betty brought South Surburban Radio Taxi Trucks to life with 200 pounds on the kitchen table.

Family brought him into the business, which was Australia's first radio-controlled fleet, and he followed their passion by starting Colin Rees Timber Transport in 1970.

"I was originally going to be a dairy farmer, but I lost my dad when he was 54. I was in New Zealand and I came back home," he said.

"Being in the taxi truck business, that took me into timber, but 1980 was probably the biggest change when we moved across into plastic polymers. We took it from bags to bulk ... we really did make an impact there."

Converting the plastics industry from 25-kilogram bags to a modern bulk-handling approach, using tankers and containers out of their Melbourne base, CRT Bulk Haulage lowered handling and distribution costs significantly.

Growing their customer base in the 1980s, CRT established the first rail hub for handling containers at Wodonga, on the Bandiana branch line, off the main Melbourne to Sydney standard-gauge track - breaking ground by introducing the first Cargo Sprinter to Australia in 2002.

"When we brought the Cargo Sprinter over, we got good support and politicians were happy," he said.

"When I went to David Marchant at the ARTC, he said to me, and I'll take this to my grave, 'I really congratulate you on what you've done here'.

"As railways were being privatised ... you like to be in charge of your own destiny. We couldn't run a big long freight train, but we could certainly run a small freight train with our volumes."

The decision to build a rail bypass of Wodonga meant the Bandiana branch line would be closed.

Before the Ettamogah Rail Hub came to fruition, Mr Rees and his brother, Phill, made the difficult decision to sell the CRT group to Queensland Rail - the family dynasty rocked by an unexpected medical setback.

"My brother had an aneurysm at home and hit the deck," Mr Rees said.

"His wife thought that he'd had a heart attack, they couldn't tell him why it happened, he just said to me, 'I'm done'.

"So, much to my agony, the business CRT was sold in 2005.

"That period was probably without a doubt, the worst time in my working career because it was something that I had created, along with my brother.

After the brothers had to let CRT go, Mr Rees had his sights on a new venture at Ettamogah.

"In 2006, I was aware of this facility, linked into the paper mill," he said.

"I came up and basically sat down with Phil Clements ... we negotiated to buy the land here and build a rail hub.

"To have an intermodal operation and move out containers where we needed to, by rail, just made sense."

Ettamogah Rail Hub is a small player in a competitive industry, largely controlled by government, but Mr Rees isn't afraid to resist the trend with the same commonsense approach as his mother.

The 75-year-old looks to rail operation in America and sees a better approach.

"(But) you've got to take into account, there's 350 million people over there, we've only got 22 (million)," Mr Rees said.

"There's a lot of the basic principles that they do very well, but we've almost forgotten about them.

"It's not the locos, it's not the trains, it's the people, it's government, it's when you get too many fingers in the pie."

The third-generation transport buff recalls the "high fives" and "back slapping" at Inland Rail conferences where it was claimed freight would be moved eight hours quicker between Melbourne and Brisbane.

"I said, 'you think that the road transport industry is going to go into some form of amnesia, and all of a sudden, all that freight's just going to flow over onto Inland Rail'," he said.

While Mr Rees does not see the road-rail logistics balance swinging significantly towards rail because of the government's project, he is optimistic about its potential.

It could be Mr Rees' daughter, Kellie, a manager at the Ettamogah Rail Hub, that sees Inland Rail in its full form.

"My wife is a keen photographer and she'd like to see a bit more of Australia," he said.

"While you've got your health, you keep doing stuff. But if you lose your health, it's one of those things you've just got to keep weighing up."

Mr Rees is far from considering retirement, and, is in fact developing another rail hub near Griffith.

He thinks expanding intermodal operations that link short and long haul operators together will improve the railway network.

Widgelli, near Griffith, will be another shortline operation and Mr Rees deeply regrets he can not call upon his late friend and mentor, Jake Jacobson, to guide its development.

The American industry leader, who operated a successful and safe shortline railway in copper transportation, met Mr Rees at the intermodal expo in Atlanta in 1994.

"He's what we need here in Australia right now... a great mentor for people coming into the industry," he said.

Mr Jacobson made such an impression that after his death, Mr Rees incorporated his late mentor's quote into his workplace culture.

"Every loco now has 'Our real power is in the pride of our people'," he added.

Details of the Ettamogah Rail Hub, including this motto, has been immortalised in miniature form in a scaled model created by Albury's Peter Allen and Graeme Schulz.

The group approached Mr Rees in 2011 about the project.

It gives Mr Rees great joy to see the legacy of he and his family's transport innovation shared with younger generations and thinks his late mother would have loved it too.

"I try to put back in (to the industry) by supporting people like them, that's where companies can make a difference" he said.

"It gives you a buzz."

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