All Railway Gazette International articles in July 2000 – Page 2

  • News

    Single route grows into a network

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    WHEN the 471 km AVE line from Madrid to Sevilla opened on April 20 1992, high-speed rail travel was a novelty for Spain. Who dreamt then that Spain would now be committed to construction of a national high-speed network? Yet work on Madrid - Barcelona route is well advanced and ...

  • News

    Israelis flock to the trains

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    RECORDS are tumbling month by month as passenger traffic continues to boom on Israel Railways. Director-General Amos Uzani announced on June 12 that for the first time more than 1 million passengers had been carried in May, a 50% rise on May 1999. In the first five months of this ...

  • News

    Fledgling MThB spreads its wings

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    INTRO: Using open access rights available under the 1999 Swiss railway reform, Mittelthurgau Railway is rapidly expanding its freight activities in partnership with other railways and businesses. Its innovative and flexible approach has taken competitors by surpriseBYLINE: Dr Ursula WidmerDeputy Director, Mittelthurgau RailwayWHEN THE Swiss Parliament promulgated laws authorising the ...

  • News

    Five more years of maglev tests needed

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    CENTRAL JAPAN Railway has announced a ’technical development plan’ for its superconducting maglev test line near Ohtsuki in Yamanashi prefecture. JR Central says that the Maglev Technological Practicality Evaluation Committee concluded in March that ’the Superconducting Maglev technology has the practicality for an ultra-high-speed mass transport system’, but it is ...

  • News

    Finance

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    Great Britain: Anglia Railways has signed a leasing agreement with HSBC Rail covering 13 Class 86 locomotives, 93 MkII coaches and 13 driving trailers until the end of the current franchise in 2004. The lease includes a C2 overhaul programme worth £14m to be completed by the end of 2000.Singapore: ...

  • News

    FEVE launches second Transcant

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    SPANISH metre-gauge operator FEVE has introduced a second rake for its Transcant

  • News

    New York freight tunnel favoured

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    CONSTRUCTION of a rail tunnel under New York harbour has been recommended by a study into improved freight links around New York City. The study also recommended the revival of car floats to carry wagons across the harbour. Only one barge operation remains, and its market share is tiny. Much ...

  • News

    Eurostar escape

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    FEW PEOPLE would dispute that the 501 passengers and 16 crew on Eurostar 9047 from Paris to London on June 5 had a lucky escape when their train derailed at around 250 km/h at Croisilles on the TGV Nord line near Arras in northern France. No-one was seriously hurt, but ...

  • News

    Regional rail services will strengthen economic ties

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    INTRO: Specially-built trains are spearheading the development of local passenger services across the Øresund link. Danish State Railways and Swedish State Railways have pooled their resources with the aim of growing the business to 4·8 million passengers a year by 2005BYLINE: Bjørn WahlstenHead of Passenger DivisionDanish State RailwaysINTEGRATING the ...

  • News

    East and west

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    VISITING Spain last month with President Vladimir Putin, Russian Minister of Railways Nikolai Aksyonenko travelled to the Las Matas premises of Patentes Talgo to sign an agreement for a joint Spanish-Russian company. Destined to build gauge-convertible rolling stock for services between Russia and countries west of Belarus, the company will ...

  • News

    The Øresund fixed link: a job well done

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    BYLINE: Sven LandeliusManaging Director, Øresundsbro KonsortietFollowing a five-year construction period, the Øresund fixed link between Denmark and Sweden will open on July 1 2000. It is with great satisfaction that my colleagues and I can look back on a job well done. We have managed to plan, construct and finish ...

  • News

    Roissy-CDG link deal

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    ON JUNE 13 the presidents of French National Railways, Réseau Ferré de France and Aéroports de Paris signed an agreement to develop a high-speed rail link to Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle Airport (RG 4.00 p205). The three companies have set up a Groupement d’Intérêt économique known as CDG-Express, which will be headed by ...

  • News

    CTRL tunnel holed through

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    BRITAIN’s Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott was the principal guest at a holing-through ceremony in the 3·2 km North Downs Tunnel on the 74 km Section 1 of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link on June 7. Railtrack Chief Executive Gerald Corbett also attended.Speaking before a roadheader broke through the final ...

  • News

    Europe's freight wall cracks

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    NINE years after European transport ministers gingerly opened the gate to liberalised rail services with the signing of Directive 91/440 in Luxembourg, open access entrepreneurs and companies with substantial rail business are starting to exploit the opportunities. As well they might, given that the International Union of Combined Road-Rail Transport ...

  • News

    Chinese east-west corridor starts

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    ON MAY 29 Chinese Railways officially inaugurated construction work on the 1129 km east-west trunk line between Nanjing and Xi’an, serving the Yangtze river valley. The line is a key part of the Ministry of Railway’s new strategy to open up corridors to western China (RG 4.00 p202). The intention ...

  • News

    Image processing checks wheels

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    ENGINEERS at the Taiyuan Railway Research Institute of Science & Technology in China have developed a system that uses image processing to measure wheel profiles in motion at speeds between 3 km/h and 6 km/h. Activated by a photoelectric switch, the trackside system illuminates the wheel with a slit light ...

  • News

    Customer centre opens

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    FASTER, BETTER and more cost effective management of freight services was promised by Swiss Federal Railways President Benedikt Weibel on May 25, when he inaugurated SBB Cargo’s new customer service centre (KSC) at Freiburg. Built at a cost of SFr22m, the centre will provide a single point of contact for ...

  • News

    Izmir celebrates metro start

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    WITH a fanfare of music and fireworks, the Mayor of Izmir Ahmet Piristina formally opened the first stage of the city's light metro network on May 22. Other participants in the celebrations included Trade & Industry Minister Kenan Tanrikulu, Finance Minister Sumer Oral, former Mayor Burhan Ozfatura, and Izmir ...

  • News

    Sloppy procedures caused Glenbrook crash

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    JUSTICE Peter McInerney criticises management for a collective failure to train and supervise operating staff in his report on the tail-end collision which killed seven and injured 51 at Glenbrook in New South Wales on December 2 1999 (RG 4.00 p212). He says 23 factors combined to cause the accident, ...

  • News

    Refurbished Corail cars finish the tour de France

    2000-07-01T10:00:00Z

    ON JULY 7 a French National Railways demonstration train formed of five refurbished Corail coaches (RG 4.00 p209) will complete a tour of 39 cities. The last call will be Lyon after a four-month itinerary that took the train all over France, including three days visiting Paris termini at the ...