Main line rail industry news – Page 1148
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Intelligence April 2006
Australia: Perth-based South Spur group has taken over the operations of Silverton Rail. RTS now runs Silverton's Broken Hill and Parkes depots, and financier Alco has taken on the NSW operator's other assets. Belgium: On March 14 the board of Infrabel approved plans to electrify the 8 km route from ...
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Underneath Taiwan
TAIWAN High Speed Rail Corp has ordered eight ride-on underframe inspection vehicles (RG 3.05 p160) for use in the maintenance of its Series 700T trainsets.Powered by 24V batteries, the trolleys will run on tracks within THSRC’s 320m long inspection pits. They will be equipped with lights, tool storage and a ...
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Leoliner firm sold
LEIPZIG Transport authority has sold a 51% stake in its Leoliner Fahrzeug-Bau Leipzig subsidiary to crane builder Kirow Leipzig for an undisclosed price. An additional 25% stake will be transferred in July 2008 under the terms of the agreement which was announced on January 25, and this will be followed ...
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Consultancy bought
HALCROW has acquired the remaining 51% interest in Bangkok-based civil engineering consultancy Pyramid Development International Corp.PDI and Halcrow have worked together since the mid-1990s on projects including the Bangkok metro and double tracking for State Railway of Thailand, and in 2002 Halcrow acquired a 49% stake in PDI from Asian ...
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DMU into service
BELARUS Railways has put into service the first of two diesel multiple-units ordered from Latvian manufacturer RVR at a cost of US$3m each.The end vehicles of the six-car set are powered by Zvezda engines built in St Petersburg, with Russian-built transmissions. Designed to offer a similar level of comfort to ...
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Dublin Docklands work starts
IRISH Minister for Transport Martin Cullen announced on March 9 the start of work for a new station which will serve Dublin's Docklands area. The island platform station will be served by Maynooth - Dublin commuter services from 2007, providing an alternative terminus to relieve Connolly station. Passengers will have ...
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Latest generation ATP
WESTINGHOUSE Rail Systems announced the launch of its latest generation of automatic train protection and automatic train operation systems on February 13. Westran has been developed for use in computer-based train control applications, in particular metros operating high-frequency services. Most of the equipment is carried on the rolling stock, which ...
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Kolkata stations
INDIA’S Eastern Railway began transferring some long-distance services from Howrah and Sealdah to a new Kolkata station on February 20. Designed to relieve pressure on the existing stations, the Rs900m Kolkata terminal is sited on a former freight yard at Chitpore where the foundation stone was laid on May 15 ...
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Keeping the data to hand
ENGINEERINGstaff working for the Rail Business Unit of steel maker and infrastructure services company Corus have begun using Gotive H41 hand-held computers to record data from track inspections.’Over the years we have accumulated a substantial amount of paper-based information which has then been manually transferred to a spreadsheet for analysis’, ...
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Explosive machines to be tested
A TICKET vending machine which can detect traces of explosives on the hands of users was demonstrated by Cubic Corp and GE Security at the American Public Transportation Association’s annual conference in Washington DC on March 7.Built by Cubic, the ticket machine incorporates GE’s Itemiser FX fingertip trace detection analyser. ...
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Tight fit on the traverser
THEARRIVAL of the five-section Cobra low-floor LRVs, which are 36m long, and the extension of 23 Tram 2000 cars to 28 m with the addition of a low-floor centre section, posed a problem for Zürich tram operator VBZ. The overhaul bays at the main workshop are laid out on either ...
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Passenger News in Brief
Amtrak has ordered over 200 blast-mitigating waste bins from BlastGard International for $828750. The MTR91 and MTR101 bins are designed to avoid fragmentation, blast shock and thermal effects from improvised bombs.The Ministry of Railways recorded 1·15 billion passengers carried on China’s railways in 2005, a 10-year high and up 3·3% ...
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Products in Brief
Ferrovie Nord Milano is installing Westermo Lynx 328 Ethernet switches and optic fibre links to replace analogue communications between trackside equipment and its control centre. So far 10 stations have been covered by the network, and work on two more lines with 22 stations is now underway.Westermo Teleindustri, SwedenLEDtrain arrivals ...
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NewsBenchmarking identifies good practice in rolling stock maintenance
An international review comparing rolling stock maintenance and performance at passenger operators around the world found a wide variance in cost-efficiency, reliability and availability. An exchange of good practice offers the potential for significant gains in cost and reliability
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Record investment boosts EFE's passenger business
A stable political and economic climate has enabled Chilean State Railways to undertake its largest-ever three-year investment programme, which involved spending of US$1bn in 2003-05. This included increased capacity on commuter networks and improved long-distance services, as John Kolodziejski reports
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Second Indo-Pakistan link open
CROSS-BORDER services between Khokhropar in Pakistan and Munabao in India were revived following the departure of the first Thar Express from Karachi at 11.00 on February 17. Railways Minister Shamim Haider and the Governor of Sindh Dr Ishratul Ibad Khan were among official guests who attended a ceremony to mark ...
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Automation gets the most out of mining railway infrastructure
Earlier this year, faster, heavier and fully-automatic trains began running on the El Teniente copper mine's private railway, marking the culmination of a major upgrade to squeeze the maximum daily tonnage out of the infrastructure
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Light rail expansion resumes
INTRO: With a series of legal challenges successfully resolved last year, preliminary works are now underway for the next phase of light rail development in Strasbourg. The 2007-08 programme will add 13·5 km to the CTS network, including Line E that will provide a new north-south link across the cityON ...