Main line rail industry news – Page 1121
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News
DB reform proposals bring more shadows than light
Next month, a working party convened by the German transport ministry is due to come up with legislative proposals for the partial flotation of Deutsche Bahn. However, there are still many policy discrepancies, which may impact on the European strategy for greater liberalisation of the continent's railways
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TCDD celebrates as high speed line nears completion
Delegates attending two seminars in December to mark the 150th anniversary of railways in Turkey were able to inspect progress on the first sections of the Ankara - Istanbul high speed line, reports Felix Schmid, Associate Professor in Railway Systems Engineering at the University of Birmingham
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Common standards regime needed to assure engineering competence
DETAILED ANALYSIS of the way the competence of individuals is assured in the UK rail industry has been undertaken by the Railway Engineers Forum, which brings together the established institutions representing civil, mechanical, electrical, signalling and track engineers. A paper published in November includes proposals that could reconcile inconsistencies in ...
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Automation improves real-time management
WHEN Tube Lines assumed control of maintenance and upgrading work on London Underground's Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines under the 30-year Public-Private Partnership (RG 10.06 p669), it inherited no less than 547 separate databases with information about the state of the assets. With only four or five hours available each ...
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NewsAxiom Rail's first thousand
UK: A recent order by wagon builder W H Davis for 30 type AMIII bogies brings to 1 000 the total number of track-friendly suspension systems ordered by UK and Nordic operators from Axiom Rail in its first 15 months. 'In just over a year of trading this is an ...
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Springs last longer
CONICAL springs which have been developed by Freudenberg Schwab to integrate the functions of steel coil springs and flexible axle bearings into a single component will to be demonstrated at the Railtex exhibition in London this month (p93). The design offers a large transverse to longitudinal stiffness ratio, with a ...
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Soda wagons come on stream
SCT EUROPE is currently supplying 272 tailor-made Barber S-2-E three-piece bogies to British wagon manufacturer W H Davis, for use on 32 tank wagons and 104 hopper wagons of 66 tonne gross weight which have been ordered by Magadi Soda Co for use in Kenya (RG 1.07 p10). ...
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Crossing risk
WE HAVE commented before about the commercial threat to rail of introducing heavier lorries into Europe (RG 10.06 p641). But another risk was graphically demonstrated in Australia’s Northern Territory on December 12, when the northbound Ghan hit a road train on an open level crossing at Ban Ban Springs, ...
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NewsEurostar seeks better connections
AT THE END of a year that saw revenue increase by 11·7% to £518m, and passengers carried through the Channel Tunnel rise 5·4% to a record 7·85 million, Eurostar Chief Executive Richard Brown told the Railway Study Association in London on January 10 that after HS1 opens in November 'we ...
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Delays scrutinised
MORE TALES of woe reach us from the Netherlands, where Parliament has commissioned an independent investigation by the National Audit Office into the much-delayed HSL-Zuid and Betuwe Route projects.Trigger for the vote was the confirmation by Transport Minister Karla Peijs on Decem-ber 19 that services on HSL-Zuid would not start ...
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Steel line handover
NIGERIA's first standard-gauge railway passed into private hands on January 11, when the 327 km Central Railway was transferred to Global Infrastructure Nigeria Ltd under a 20-year concession from the Bureau of Public Enterprises. Isolated from NRC's 1 067 mm gauge main lines, the Central Railway was conceived as an ...
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Ore lines face open access threat
WITH THEIR own discrete networks of heavy-haul iron ore lines in Western Australia, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto have expressed deep concern over a Federal Court ruling on December 18 that could see the opening up of their railways for use by rival mining companies. Fortescue Metals Group had sought ...
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Loop resignalling
CHICAGO TRANSIT Authority awarded a $48?2m contract on January 10 for resignalling the downtown Loop at the heart of the city’s elevated metro network over the next three years.Divane Brothers Electric Co is to replace the signalling and train control systems at the busy Van Buren/Wabash and Lake/Wells junctions where ...
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Docklands Light Railway Stratford extension contract
TRANSPORT for London has awarded the first of three contacts covering construction of the 5 km extension of the Docklands Light Railway to Stratford International, which is scheduled to open in 2010. The Skanska-GrantRail joint venture is expected to begin work immediately on the £39m contract, which covers construction ...
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Hanoi tram revival underway
CHAIRMAN of the Hanoi People’s Committee Nguyen Quoc Trieu officially launched the construction of the first modern light rail line in the Vietnamese capital at a groundbreaking ceremony on December 27.Work began at the site of the maintenance depot and operations control centre in Tu Liem district, west of the ...
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Jakarta projects
DETAILED design for a 14?5 km metro line in Jakarta is expected to get underway shortly, following the announcement of a loan agreement in December.JBIC is providing ?1?87bn to finance engineering services for the Jakarta MRT System Project. The metro is expected to adopt Japanese construction techniques, including the shield ...
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Leslys concession
INTERURBAN tram-train services linking Lyon with the airport and TGV station at Saint-Exup?ry are expected to start running in the autumn of 2009, following the signing of a 30-year concession to develop and operate the ?100m Leslys project (RG 10.02 p609).Conseil G?n?ral du Rh?ne has selected the RhonExpress consortium led ...
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Madrid expansion plan nears completion
SPAIN: The extension of Madrid Metro Line 11 from Pan Bendito to La Peseta in the southwestern suburb of Carabanchel opened to traffic on December 18 2006. With intermediate stations at San Francisco and Carabanchel Alto, the 2·7 km extension has cost €172m to build and is expected to be ...
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Mumbai SPV
THE SPECIAL Purpose Vehicle company to build and operate Line 1 of the planned Mumbai metro network under a 35-year BOT concession was officially incorporated on December 22. Under the PPP agreement signed earlier this year (RG 7.06 p378), Mumbai Metro One Pvt Ltd is owned 74% by the Reliance ...