Main line rail industry news – Page 1188
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News
Scales tip against Amtrak
AN ATTEMPT in the US Senate to force an amendment to the President’s 2006 budget giving just over $1bn to Amtrak, in addition to the $360m proposed to support Northeast Corridor services (RG 3.05 p115), was voted out on March 16.This darkened the increasingly gloomy outlook for Amtrak, whose Bush-appointed ...
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Austrian tunnels inch closer
NEW CREDIT guarantees to be issued for infrastructure projects by the European Investment Bank are likely to favour cross-border schemes designed as public-private partnerships such as the Brenner base tunnel.Last month Stefaan de Rynck, a spokesman for European Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot, cited the Brenner base tunnel as one scheme ...
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Macau plans light rail network
TENDERS are to be invited next year for construction of a 27 km light rail network in the Macau Special Administrative Region, with the aim of having the first routes operational by 2009. Proposals for the three-line network were unveiled by the Land, Public Works & Transport Bureau at the ...
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Intelligence
Bangladesh:The Ministry of Communications has called tenders for consultants to undertake feasibility studies into double-tracking and electrification of the Dhaka - Chittagong main line. The study will also look at building a cut-off from Laksam to Dhaka, shorter than the route via Akhaura. Belarus:The creation of a joint venture to ...
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ClearVue through the fog
RAIN, mist and smoke degrade the quality of images produced by surveillance cameras, reducing their usefulness to operators. To tackle this problem, Manchester University spin-off company Dmist Technologies is commercialising a device it has developed to automatically enhance video.ClearVue is a compact electronic unit which sits between the camera and ...
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Singapore metro networked
THIS summer Singapore MRT will complete the roll-out of digital CCTV at its 51 metro stations, three depots and the operations control centre. The contract to provide analogue-quality video over an IP transmission network was awarded to O’Connors Engineering and video networking specialist COE last year, and work began in ...
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Schedule patent
REAL-TIME information management from the mining industry has been adapted by Modular Mining Systems to improve the planning, supervision and dispatching of trains on mine-to-port freight railways.In January Modular Mining Systems obtained a US patent for its Integrated Railroad System, which is combined with GPS tracking of trains to form ...
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Seibu scandal
AFTERSTEPPING down as President of Japan’s Seibu Railway in January, Terumasa Koyanagi was found dead on February 19, apparently the second senior manager to commit suicide after an accounting scandal hit the railway. Last October Seibu admitted that it had been falsifying its financial statements for more than 50 years. ...
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Passenger News in Brief
Argentinean operator Ferrovias began test running of refurbished coaches with automatic doors on January 27. Platforms are to be raised at the 22 stations on the 52 km Retiro - Villa Rosa line to suit the vehicles, and Saldias station will be relocated 300m to the north.GO Transit is to ...
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Mowgly gets moving
A CONSORTIUM has been established to study the implementation of open standards for the provision of broadband internet access on trains, aircraft and ships.Launched on January 1, Mobile Wideband Global Link System (Mowgly) is a two-year project to carry out business analysis, engineering studies and performance evaluation of satellite-based communications. ...
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Products in Brief
Madrid Metro is to fit over 1000 heavy-duty RFID tags to its trains and 36 sleeper-mounted readers with direction detection to the tracks. These will provide vehicle position information to change automatically the talk groups of onboard Tetra radios as trains move.TagMaster, SwedenY2K Aviation, Solutions E2 and Fiber Protector Norge ...
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Guangzhou to keep out intruders
Security is a key feature of the design of the integrated operations control centre which Thales and HollySys are supplying to Guangzhou Metro Corp under a contract announced on January 10.The OCC for Line 4 is the first which Thales has designed with a specific focus on preventing malicious damage ...
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Sidetrack
From sea to seaOver the years, Sidetrack has reported on a wide range of unusual loads being moved by rail. Chinese Railways is set to join the roll of honour next year.Developers have started work on a 120m yuan luxury swimming centre at the Shijingshan Sports Centre in Beijing, where ...
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Security in Brief
Background classical music is to be played over the public address systems of 35 London Underground stations maintained by Metronet in an effort to deter people not intending to travel from loitering in the stations. Tests at four District Line stations found that reports of physical and verbal abuse fell ...
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Finance
Bulgaria: BDZ-EAD has proposed floating a limited issue of shares on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange in order to raise capital to fund its future development strategy now awaiting board approval (p162).China: Kowloon - Canton Railway has launched a property development scheme at Wu Kai Sha on the recently-opened Ma On ...
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Pointers March 2005
On January 25 the King of Bhutan Jigme Singye Wangchuk and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed in Delhi to launch a feasibility study for rail links between the two countries. Routes under consideration are Hasimara - Phuentsholing with a branch to Pasaka (18 km), Kokrajhar - Geylegphug (70 km), ...
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Suppliers take on the contractmaintenance challenge
INTRO: As train operators seek to reduce whole-life costs and improve reliability, they are increasingly contracting out responsibility for their rolling stockMAINTENANCE AND support services are becoming a crucial factor as competition starts to spread through the rail sector. Around the world, deregulation and privatisation are forcing both existing and ...
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Metros
China: Passengers using Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway network rose 8% to 834 million in 2004; Airport Express traffic went up 17% to 8·01 million as air travel recovered from the Sars health scare.Czech Republic: The Railway Authority has certified for revenue operation Skoda Transportation’s prototype 05T Vektra low-floor tram, ...
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iDTGV woos internet bookers
SNCF announced on January 14 that the iDTGV project had struck a resounding chord with its clientele. It revealed that there had been 261000 visitors to the idtgv.com website, generating 57000 ticket sales in the first eight weeks of booking. The first 4000 seats were sold within 24h, and average ...
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PKPloses less
POLISHState Railways’ passenger business made a loss of 760m zloty in 2004, an improvement on the 1 245m loss in 2003, President Janusz Detlaff said in January. However, ticket sales fell from 1·20bn to 1·18bn zloty. To try to stem the flow of passengers to other modes, tenders are to ...