Main line rail industry news – Page 1235
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News
Canfranc conversion
UNDER ITS PROGRAMME to convert the Huesca - Canfranc route to 1435mm gauge and electrify it at 25 kV AC for international freight traffic, the Spanish Ministry of Development has awarded the Sers consultancy a €508755 contract to design formation enhancement works on the 29·5 km from the end of ...
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Delhi Metro extends
INDIAN Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is due to inaugurate the second section of the Delhi Metro network on October 2. Running for 4·5 km from Tis Hazari to Tri Nagar, the extension has intermediate stations at Pulbangash, Pratap Nagar and Vivekanandpuri, serving one of the most densely populated parts ...
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PATH spending approved
AN $809m capital programme for the PATH metro network was approved by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey board of directors on September 10. It is the Port Authority’s biggest single investment in PATH since it was acquired from the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad 41 years ago. ...
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Dublin expansion gets underway
LAST MONTH saw the start of work on the €170m first phase of the DART & Suburban Enhancement Project to expand commuter services in the Dublin area. Due to be completed by mid-2005, the project includes platform lengthening to ensure that all 30 stations on the DART network will be ...
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Monopoly falls
FOLLOWING complaints by Germany’s private railways, the Federal Cartel Office has ruled that third parties are free to supply electricity to the 162/3Hz high voltage grid which feeds DB’s traction substations. Until now this has been operated exclusively by DB subsidiary DB Energie GmbH. A report commissioned by 28 of ...
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Glimmer of hope
WITH TEARS in their eyes, the citizens of Basavilbaso in Argentina congregated at the small town’s station on August 26 to witness the departure at 08.00 of the first passenger train since 1992. Around 21/2h later it arrived at Villaguay 62 km down the line. Local politicians were joined on ...
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Sidetrack
Construction workers on the Qinghai to Tibet railway are facing some of the most extreme environmental conditions tackled by any railway builders. Work has now been completed on the Hoh Xil plateau, which is up to 4·7 km above sea level, and the next stage of the project will take ...
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Team to review Crossrail again
THE CASE for building London's long-planned east-west Crossrail Line 1 is to be reviewed by a team of experts appointed by Transport Secretary Alistair Darling. The team, headed by Network Rail Deputy Chairman Adrian Montague, will report 'around the turn of the year', he said on September 9. They will ...
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NRC is ’dead’, says minister
ON August 7 the Lagos Daily Trust reported that Nigerian Railway Corp had launched ’a massive rail expansion programme throughout the country’, made possible by the arrival of long-awaited consignments of imported track materials that were being distributed to key locations. NRC Assistant Director of Public Relations David Ndakosu was ...
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Emotion wins again
NOT FOR the first time, a European operator has backtracked on plans to withdraw restaurant cars. Even in Switzerland where main line trips rarely last longer than 3h, passengers revolted last year over SBB’s plan to provide a minimalist bistro service on its IC2000 fleet of double-deck push-pull trains. Now ...
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Hirers to the rescue
ZIMBABWE Mining & Smelting Co is to hire two diesel locomotives from South Africa in a deal that could pave the way for major rail users to overcome loco and rolling stock shortages crippling the national railway. Chief Executive Sydwell Jena confirmed early last month that Zimasco was about to ...
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Monti cracks the whip
AS WE closed for press, the future of ailing industrial titan Alstom was hanging in the balance. Around six weeks had passed since the French government and a group of banks agreed a rescue package on August 5 (RG 9.03 p594), which was to be endorsed by shareholders on September ...
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NewsTram tug
THE FIRST production tram tug to use WheelMotor traction motors has been delivered to Dublin's Red Cow LUAS depot, where it will be used to position Alstom Citadis trams over a Sculfort wheel lathe. The Railcat1 design was developed by Stored Energy Technology following an enquiry from Alstom, which ...
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World Speed Survey 2003
Promises, promises! In his biennial survey of the fastest point-to-point passenger train timings with start-to-stop timings at over 150 km/h, Dr Colin Taylor finds that Germany has moved up the league table, but Japan and France remain unchallenged at the top. Although Sweden climbs to sixth place, other changes ...
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Virtual crowds
THEMOVEMENTS of hundreds of passengers at metro stations can be realistically modelled using Legion 1.3 software, which has been developed using research into crowd dynamics and the impact of spatial configurations on pedestrian movement. Legion’s consultants have been using previous versions of the software since 1999 to produce detailed, objective ...
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Ticket and gate orders
ASCOM has won a €50m order from SNCF to supply automatic access control gates for 120 stations in Ile de France. As well as delivery and installation over the next five years, the contract covers maintenance and servicing for 10 years. The gates will be able to read both magnetic ...
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Passenger News in Brief
Free wireless internet access is being made available to first class passengers on some Montréal - Toronto VIA Rail services as part of a four-month trial by Bell Canada, Intel and PointShot Wireless.Suzhou Schindler Elevator Co has won a 66m yuan contract to supply 97 escalators to Guangzhou Metro. Installation ...
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Skoda Electric restructuring
ON JULY 1 Skoda Electric sro completed a merger with Skoda Trakcní Motory sro, and took over traction component casing production from Skoda Dopravní Technika sro.Skoda Holding, owned by Appian Group, began combining its electric traction systems manufacturing activities into a single entity at the start of the year, establishing ...
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Infrastructure industry heads for Manchester
THE INFRARAIL 2003 exhibition will be held at the G-MEX centre in Manchester from September 16 to 18. Every aspect of infrastructure work will be on show, from civil engineering to fare collection and staff recruitment.Aimed at all companies involved in the rail infrastructure market, Infrarail will be of interest ...
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Ballast machine cleans up
BERLIN-BASED contractor MGW Gleis- & Weichenbau GmbH & Co KG is using an RM 95-700 high capacity ballast cleaning machine from Plasser & Theurer for maintenance work on the German rail network. The eight-axle articulated hydraulic machine offers a precise, laser-aligned cutting of the subgrade, with integrated supply of new ...