Main line rail industry news – Page 1329
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Neckar S-Bahn
MARCH 20 saw the signing of an accord between German Railway and the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar to expand the scope of the planned Rhein-Neckar S-Bahn network. First proposed in 1996 to serve the region around Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and Heidelberg, the S-Bahn is due to be launched with the December 2003 timetable ...
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Swiss merger agreed
AFTER many years of close co-operation, Switzerland’s Bodensee-Toggenburg and Südost railways are to merge. On March 26, the BT and SOB boards announced that they had signed a letter of intent; subject to shareholders’ approval, the merger will take effect from January 1 2002.Mergers elsewhere have left the two ...
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Austrian Talents
AUSTRIAN Federal Railways confirmed on April 17 that it had exercised an option to buy a fleet of Talent electric multiple-units from Bombardier Transportation and Elin EBG Traction, at a total value of 166m euros. The deal is the first to be agreed under a ’framework contract’ negotiated last year ...
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Corridor management
GERMAN Railway announced on April 9 that its infrastructure business DB Netz AG was to restructure its activities on a corridor basis. The 37500 route-km network will be divided into 22 route corridors, in order to co-ordinate planning and maintenance work more efficiently. Over the next three years, DB Netz ...
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Railtrack rescued by government bail-out
KEY STATEMENTS issued on April 2 have altered significantly the relationship between the government and Railtrack, the company that owns and manages Britain’s national rail infrastructure. Payment of a £1·5bn subsidy agreed with the Rail Regulator as recently as January will now be brought forward from the 2006-11 period to ...
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Strikes force change of course
TWO WEEKS of industrial action by drivers at French National Railways appeared to be drawing to a close on April 12 as officials at the FGAAC and SUD-Rail unions advised their members to return to work. After making major concessions on April 5 which had satisfied the larger unions such ...
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SNCF bids to conquer the Med
ON JUNE 1 French National Railways will launch commercial services on TGV Méditerranée. Adding 250 km to France’s high speed network, the new line joins end-on with TGV Rh
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PEOPLE
President Bush has nominated Allan Rutter as Administrator of the US Federal Railroad Administration. He had been Director of Transportation Policy in the Texas Governor’s Office since 1995.British Columbia Railway has appointed Robert Phillips as President & CEO.Queensland Rail has made a number of appointments. Mike Scanlan has become Group ...
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Reform Council backs Amtrak break-up
ON MARCH 20 the Amtrak Reform Council released a scathing report accusing the National Railroad Passenger Corp of suffering from ’fundamental institutional flaws’. The document noted that Amtrak, set up in 1971, could not function both as a profit-driven organisation and as an arm of public policy. It called for ...
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Reform pressure mounts
YET ANOTHER official report has recommended major reform of Indian Railways. This time it originated with the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Railways, which last month published a document in response to IR’s requests for grants in 2000-01. The report went much further than commenting on the grants, making strong criticism ...
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Spain’s high-speed challenge
HIGH SPEED rail travel has long since ceased to be an adventure. For more than a decade trains have run routinely at 300 km/h in France, while Japan, Belgium and Spain joined the club during the 1990s. The new Roma - Napoli line in Italy, Britain’s Channel Tunnel Rail Link, ...
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Siberian saga draws to a close
BACK IN the USSR in 1981, construction workers toiling to build the 15·3 km Severomuisky tunnel on the Baikal-Amur Magistral encountered fast-flowing underground rivers that rapidly halted work. As we said at the time, ’streams of hot and cold water mingled with sand to produce a treacherous quicksand that spelt ...
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Belgian investment authorised
ON TUESDAY March 27 two trains collided head-on at Pécrot, 14 km from Leuven on Belgian National Railways’ line from Ottignies, killing three crew and five passengers. The driver of an empty EMU appears to have misread a signal at Wavre that had been cleared for a freight train, and ...
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Rail Estonia dumped amid controversy
PRIVATISATION of Eesti Raudtee, the largest component of Estonia’s state-owned railway responsible for freight and main line infrastructure, suffered a major setback on February 28 when Rail Estonia lost its status as preferred bidder. RE failed to convince the privatisation agency EPA that it had a strategic investor on board ...
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Finance
Australia: Cheung Kong Infrastructure Holdings Ltd of Hong Kong is to invest A$26·5m in the Alice Springs - Darwin project, buying two tranches of floating rate loan notes issued by Asia Pacific Transport Consortium.Brazil: Ferropar, operator of the Guarapuava - Cascavel section of Ferroeste, is planning to invest R$43m ...
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Escape route
Alert Safety Technologies has developed Safescape, a device which can break instantly a toughened glass window to provide an escape route when a button is pressed. It can be fitted to existing windows, and a film over the glass makes it easy to push out when frosted.Alert Safety Technologies, Great ...
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Track suppliers congregate at Rail-Tech Europe
THE THIRD Rail-Tech Europe rail and infrastructure exhibition is being held in Utrecht on April 3-5. The exhibition and its associated conferences will form an important European forum for railway industry suppliers and operators.Inside the exhibition hall will be a 160m stretch of track, but additional exhibition space will be ...
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Metros
Canada: Stcum of Montréal has signed a co-operation agreement with Lyon transport authority Sytral and its operator SLTC. Joint development projects may include smart card ticketing.GO Transit has opened a new station at Rutherford on its Toronto - Bradford route. The station building and parking spaces for 500 cars were ...
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Namibia starts
NEXTMONTH is due to see the start of earthworks on the 350 km Tsumeb - Oshikango line in Namibia (RG 11.99 p689). Design and project management has been awarded to Windhoek Consulting Engineers. Tracklaying is scheduled to commence in January 2002, and the line is expected to open in August ...