Kawasaki Rail Car’s plant in Yonkers, New York, rolled out it 5 000th vehicle for the US market on October 9.
European Locomotive Leasing has closed a €250m financing round in the form of a Senior Secured CAPEX revolving credit facility over seven years. This will support the growth of its fleet to more than 300 Siemens Mobility Vectron locomotives. ELL now has 12 banks participating in its financing. ‘The issuance was four times oversubscribed, despite only a limited number of banks being invited to participate’, said CEO Christian Kern on October 15. ‘This confirms the investors’ confidence in ELL’s robust business model.’
IVU Traffic Technologies has won its first order in India, to supply Delhi to Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System operator DB RRTS Operations India with its IVU.rail software for the rostering of more than 600 personnel from the start of 2025.
Minister of Construction & Transport János Lázár announced on October 2 that the Hungarian government had purchased construction company Strabag’s 6·1% share in cross-border railway group GySEV, bringing the Hungarian state’s shares up to 71·8%. The Austrian state holds the remaining 28·2%.
Alstom and Montréal technology incubator Centech have formalised a two-year partnership to work with promising start-ups in the Canadian rail sector. This ‘fits in perfectly with our open innovation strategy’, said Bruno Gutierres, Director of Open Innovation at Alstom. ’It enables us to benefit from a dynamic ecosystem that will enrich our innovation in priority areas such as artificial intelligence, automation, energy and decarbonisation. These future innovations will be integrated into our products and services to meet the needs of our customers around the world.’
Rail communication technology supplier Televic GSP and AI company NannyML have formed a partnership to develop advanced AI sensor monitoring for condition-based maintenance in the rail industry. NannyML’s proprietary algorithms initially developed to monitor machine learning model performance will allow for accurate differentiation between faulty sensors and genuine anomalies.
Moment is providing enhanced digital entertainment on TGV Lyria trains between France and Switzerland. Preloaded offline French, German, and English language content is available without needing an internet connection, and a dynamic map presents real-time information and personalised suggestions related to destinations. ‘On average, 65% of passengers connect to the onboard wi-fi portal’, said TGV Lyria CEO Eric Dehlinger. ‘Among these, 33% of our travellers are looking for more entertainment options. It became clear to us that we needed to rethink our wi-fi portal with simpler connectivity, a more ergonomic design, and more French and Swiss content.’
B2b travel booking platform RateHawk now offers rail travel in 13 European countries through a partnership with Rail Europe. ‘We have ambitious plans to expand the railway service and are seeking collaborations with rail ticket suppliers both in Europe and across other continents’, said Fredrik Bonnalt, Head of Non-Accommodation Supply at RateHawk’s parent company Emerging Travel Group.
Telecoms and control systems supplier Modern Railway Systems has joined the US High Speed Rail Coalition’s executive committee.
Matthias Rust is to leave the executive board of IVU Traffic Technologies with effect from October 31. The board will then have two members, with Leon Struijk as COO and Martin Müller-Elschner as CEO & CFO.
Travel management company Emburse is to use SilverRail‘s European rail booking, ticketing and after-sales platform from 2025, adding to the Amtrak content the companies have provided since 2022. ’We’re seeing a significant modal shift from planes to trains amongst corporations given net zero targets and SilverRail’s platform makes it easy for any travel company to offer global rail content via one API’, said Brett Ring, VP Commercial at SilverRail.