All Railway Gazette International articles in April 2005 – Page 3

  • News

    Contractors hurry to finish HSL-Zuid

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    INTRO: With 98% of civil engineering work for the HSL-Zuid project complete, tracklaying on the southern section of the 300 km/h line will be finished by the end of 2005. Wim Knopperts, Director, Project & Infra Management of the HSL Project Organisation, briefed Murray Hughes WORK ON the first high ...

  • News

    Circular revival

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    ON MARCH 8, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz inaugurated limited services on a section of the Karachi Circular Railway, which is being progressively reopened after a decade-long closure (RG 12.05 p816).The Governor of Sindh Province Dr Ishratul reviewed arrangements for the revived service the previous week. Pakistan Railways has contracted ...

  • News

    Chubu’s Centrair rail link takes off

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    FEBRUARY 17 saw the formal opening of the new Central Japan International Airport, located on a new island in Ise Bay, 35 km south of Nagoya. Centrair is connected to the city centre by a new express rail service using Meitetsu’s Tokoname Line. Aichi Prefecture is hosting this year’s World ...

  • News

    Celebration Congress

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    THE Hipertrack project (left) could reduce the need for lineside noise barriers on high speed lines, according to the Fraunhofer Institute. If so, this would represent a major step forward in track design, which we have chosen as one of several railway technology topics to be discussed at our Centenary ...

  • News

    CDG Express tries a new route

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    REVISED proposals for the planned express rail link between Paris Est and Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle Airport were unveiled to local municipalities by Réseau Ferré de France on February 4. The target is to have the line opening in 2012, to support the Paris bid to host that year’s Olympic Games.CDG Express is ...

  • News

    CAF profits increase

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    SPANISH train builder CAF made a pre-tax profit of €17·4m in 2004, an increase of 21% on 2003. EBITDA was €32·6m, and net profit was €14m. Sales in 2004 totalled €578m, up 16·8% on the previous year, with the Spanish domestic market accounting for 44% of sales. Contracts awarded during ...

  • News

    Industry News in Brief

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    ABB has reported earnings before interest and taxes of $1·1bn for 2004, up from $537m in 2003. Income was $201m, $980m up on 2003.Icon Polymer Group has invested £75000 in a Berstoff Rotocure machine which can produce rubber sheets up to 1·6 m wide for gangway diaphragms.CKD Kutn

  • News

    Passenger News in Brief

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    Indian Railways Catering & Tourism Corp and Intrex India have introduced Itz Cash pre-payment cards to provide access to on-line booking to customers without credit cards. FS launched its second TrenOK low-cost passenger service (RG 1.05 p13) on March 15, with tickets for the 5h trip between Roma and Bari ...

  • News

    Training in Brief

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    Indian Railways’ Vadadara staff college is to host training courses for staff from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand.From April 1 Britain’s Centre for Rail Skills will become part of GoSkills, the Sector Skills Council set up to cover the passenger transport industry. It will identify sources of funding for ...

  • News

    Private boxes in prospect

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    AT THE END of February Indian Minister of Railways Laloo Prasad Yadav published an unashamedly populist budget for IR’s 2005-06 financial year, with no fares increases at all and no rise in freight rates. Freight tariffs are, however, to be heavily simplified, with rates for 4000 different types of traffic ...

  • News

    East-west box test

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    BIDDING to win more freight traffic between China and Europe from ocean shipping, a trial container train was run from Hohhot to Frankfurt last month.Dispatched from the Inner Mongolian city on March 1, the train arrived in Frankfurt-am-Main on March 17 after a 9814 km journey. The westbound train carried ...

  • News

    BNDES to take stake in Ferronorte

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    LAST MONTH Brazilian federal investment bank BNDES was expecting to complete a deal to take a 31% stake in Ferronorte, by converting debt and providing new resources, with the aim of increasing capacity on the soya export corridor between Alto Araguaia and the port of Santos.Under the terms of an ...

  • News

    Civils and signals block speed-up on world's fastest line

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    PRESENTING a report to the Spanish Parliament on difficulties encountered with the Madrid - Lleida section of the Madrid - Barcelona high speed line, Development Minister Magdalena Álvarez said last month that the assessment confirmed 'the impossibility of operating the line with the features for which it was designed and ...

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    News

    Crossrail bill introduced

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    A BILL to authorise construction of the east-west Crossrail Line 1 under central London was introduced to Parliament on February 22. Unlike an earlier private bill that failed in May 1994, the new hybrid bill is backed by the government. Transport Secretary Alistair Darling told MPs 'the case for ...

  • News

    i-Trans bids for research funding

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    WITH THE AIM of creating Europe’s leading centre for railway systems, 40 companies and 16 research bodies in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France have come together as i-Trans to bid for government funding under the p

  • News

    Dubai metro bids opened

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    A JAPANESE consortium of Mitsubishi, Obayashi and Kajima with Turkish civil engineering group Yapi Merkezi has submitted the lowest bid for the first phase of the Dubai automated light metro network.The final tenders for civil, mechanical and electrical work were opened by the Dubai Municipality’s LRT project office on February ...

  • News

    Barcelona works start

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    ON MARCH 3 Dragados and Tecsa began work on a €29·3m contract that forms the first part of a €220m programme to increase capacity at Barcelona Sants station in preparation for the arrival of high speed services (RG 9.04 p522). The first phase includes the construction of new through track ...

  • News

    Ballastless track meets design challenges

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    APART from a 6 km section close to the Belgian border where ballasted track is used, HSL-Zuid will have ballastless track throughout. On the basis of an evaluation of track types using a direct fastening system as a reference (RG 12.00 p819), Infraspeed BV chose the Rheda 2000¨ design as ...

  • News

    Austrian tunnels inch closer

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    NEW CREDIT guarantees to be issued for infrastructure projects by the European Investment Bank are likely to favour cross-border schemes designed as public-private partnerships such as the Brenner base tunnel.Last month Stefaan de Rynck, a spokesman for European Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot, cited the Brenner base tunnel as one scheme ...

  • News

    Dutch show attracts growing interest

    2005-04-01T10:00:00Z

    INTRO: The fifth Rail-Tech Europe is being held at the Royal Dutch Jaarbeurs trade fair in Utrecht on April 4 - 7 WITH THREE high-profile new lines under construction and intense debate over the progress of the railway reform process, rail is a hot topic in the Netherlands at present. ...