Main line rail industry news – Page 1135
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Passenger News in Brief
Passenger News in BriefA KC581m two-year long modernisation of Ostrava-Svinov station by OHLwas completed on June 29.UK internet ticket retailer Trainline has been sold to Exponent Private Equity by Virgin and National Express for £163m.Czech Railways has bought a 38·79% stake in dining and sleeping car operator JLV from the ...
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Eco-station opens
LIVERPOOL South Parkway station was officially opened on July 14, linking together the former Allerton and Garston stations with an integrated booking office and a bus station offering connections to John Lennon Airport. Environmental considerations took a high priority, with rain water collection to save 700000litres of mains water a ...
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Cable tie up
WIRING and cable manufacturer Leoni is to acquire Swiss company Studer Draht- und Kabelwerk AG with effect from July 31, subject to regulatory approval. The Nürnberg-based firm will pay €105m for the cable maker, which had sales of about €84m in 2005.Based in Solothurn, Studer Cables has 350 employees. It ...
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Czech franchising
HAVING retained responsibility for inter-regional trains when the specification and funding of loss-making local services was passed to regional authorities in 2005, the Czech Ministry of Transport has awarded incumbent CD a contract to operate Liberec - Pardubice trains from December. The other bidders to operate the 161 km route ...
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East Side tunnelling
A JOINT venture led by a division of Spanish civil engineering company Dragados has been awarded a tunnelling contract valued at nearly $428m for work on Long Island Rail Road’s East Side Access project. Due for completion in about six years, the project will bring LIRR trains into a new ...
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Coupling up
’HOW COME nobody has invented that yet?’ is a question Voith Turbo Scharfenberg says it has been asked since launching its one4 coupler head, which is now undergoing field trials on ICE3 trainsets in Germany. The manufacturer says the coupler ’represents a radical simplification and standardisation’ of existing designs.Instead of ...
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Possession or ownership?
IT LOOKS as if political decisions determining the future legal status of Deutsche Bahn AG will be taken next month. But don’t expect anything simple or clear cut.At least the options are being narrowed down. A joint parliamentary committee charged by the government with investigating the privatisation of DB AG ...
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Underground daylight
FULL-SPECTRUM lighting recreating 90% of the range of sunlight is being installed on 423 Montréal metro cars during the refurbishment of the 1970s-built vehicles.’Cool white fluorescents are depressive’, said Bernard Pepin, a colour specialist who advised operator STM on the refurbishment programme. ’These full-spectrum lights, on the other hand, have ...
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Improving rail's competitive position to serve the Belgian ports
To boost rail's share of the growing traffic using the ports of Antwerpen, Gent and Zeebrugge, Infrabel has unveiled a package of investment projects totalling nearly €1·2bn over the next six years. Harry Hondius reports
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Airport rail links must focus on service
Germany is world leader in terms of connecting its major airports to the national rail network, but Dr-Ing Edmund Krieger argues that the investment in hardware is not yet being matched by 'software' improvements in terms of services and passenger handling
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People
On July 12 Anne-Marie Idrac (below) was appointed as President of SNCF, succeeding Louis Gallois who has stepped down as head of the French national rail operator to become Co-Chairman of European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. Idrac had been head of Paris transport operator RATP since 2002, and was ...
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US$47m Belgrano spend proposed
THE GOVERNOR of Argentina’s Salta province, Juan Carlos Romero, has presented a plan that would see US$47m invested in the metre-gauge Belgrano network (RG 7.06 p376) to restore key routes over a 16-month period. The 500 km identified as priority routes under the plan include Embarcación - Formosa, Joaquín V ...
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First part of Kashmir line on course to open next year
One of India's most ambitious civil engineering projects takes a US$2·5bn railway deep into the Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir
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Radio silence
ALMOST EXACTLY four years ago, on June 28 2002, the California Public Utilities Commission formally approved the use of Advanced Automatic Train Control on the Bay Area Rapid Transit network in Oakland and San Francisco. Being developed for BART under a $40m contract awarded to Harmon Industries in 1998 (RG ...
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Sendai airport line nears completion
EAST JAPAN Railway plans to open the 7·1 km rail link to Sendai airport early in 2007 - before the end of the current financial year. Seen as a key element in plans to open up the Tohoku region, the scheme takes the form of a public-private partnership which is ...
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Railroads invest in extra capacity to move Asian import windfall
Unprecedented volumes of Asian import traffic arriving at ports along the Pacific coast are putting pressure on North American railroads, but the welcome boost to their profitability is helping to fund the much-needed investment in additional capacity, explains David Lustig
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Iris 320 casts an expert eye over the French network
SNCF has completed a €33·5m programme to convert a TGV Réseau trainset for inspecting track, overhead electrification, signalling and telecommunications systems at speeds up to 320 km/h. Laurent Charlier reports
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Protos EMU prototype ready to roll
DUE TO be unveiled at the InnoTrans show in Berlin next month is the Protos EMU, also designed for the European regional market. The Protos concept is being developed by Fahrzeugtechnik Dessau, which has just been acquired by Russia's Transmash Holding Group (RG 4.06 p174). Last year FTD won an ...