Main line rail industry news – Page 1352
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News
Schuylkill Valley go-ahead
PLANS to create a 100 km rail corridor linking Philadelphia and Reading were approved by the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority board on June 21, and by the neighbouring Berks Area Reading Transportation Authority board five days later. The decisions pave the way for the start of engineering design, and enable ...
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Line 9 approved
BARCELONA’s Metropolitan Transport Authority has approved plans to build a 35 km orbital metro line linking the city’s eastern, northern and western suburbs (MR 00 p30). The formal endorsement of Line 9 enables the Catalunya regional government to apply for European Union cohesion funding towards the estimated costs of Pts180bn ...
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Montreal management contract
Sir - We were interested to read your article on Montreal’s commuter rail expansion (MR 00 p43). Unfortunately, the comment that ’AMT subsidiary Gesproex specifies service levels on various routes...’ does not represent the correct position.In 1992, AMT awarded a contract to a joint venture known as SLIG, comprising SNC-Lavalin, ...
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Chopped again
ON JULY 10 the Queensland government announced it was dropping plans for a light rail line in central Brisbane. This is the second time that local politicians have ditched a light rail scheme for the state capital, the first occasion being when bids for a 14 km Briztram route (RG ...
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STB wins another round
DESPITE last minute lobbying efforts, Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Canadian National have lost the court battle to overturn a government suspension of railway mergers. On July 14 the Court of Appeals in Washington ruled 2:1 that the Surface Transportation Board was legally empowered to impose such a moratorium and ...
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Car-carrier comeback
WORK began on construction of the southern section of the 57 km Gotthard base tunnel on July 10 with a ceremonial blast at the Bodio worksite, where a 1·2 km access shaft will take tunnellers to the alignment of the main bore. The base tunnel will not open until 2012, ...
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Dizzy after whizzy ride
CHINESE Premier Zhu Rongji levitated on July 2 at up to 400 km/h on the Transrapid maglev guideway in Germany’s Emsland. He was clearly impressed by his experience, although he confessed to suffering from ’a little dizziness’ after the trip, on which he was accompanied by German Transport Minister Reinhard ...
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Vote foreshadows more competition
AMONG THOSE who have vowed to force Europe’s national railways to face up to the calls for competition are a determined core of politicians who understand that the decline in rail freight’s market share to just 14% of tonne-km must be reversed. Another tiny step was taken on July 5 ...
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Maghreb metamorphosis
CIVIL WAR has long precluded serious interest by outside parties in the fate of the 4219 km Algerian Railways network. The murderous feuds of the recent past will not be forgotten, but it looks as though opportunities to revitalise what was once a busy and growing railway are at hand. ...
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Kyrgyzstan to plug Silk Route gap
Completion last December of China’s 1446 km South Xinjiang Railway to Kashi leaves a gap of less than 500 km to be closed in a historic trade route. Richard Hope reports on plans for a national network in the Kyrgyz Republic that will meet this need
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BCV and JNP shortlists
UK: London Underground announced on July 5 the shortlist of bidders for the two deep-level infrastructure companies being formed under the Public-Private Partnership, following the submission of bids on March 31. LINC and Metronet have been shortlisted for Infraco BCV (Bakerloo, Central and Victoria lines), with Tube Lines Group and ...
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NewsTaskforce reports on Northern Ireland rail options
UK: This month should see an interim report presented to Britain's Department of Regional Development setting out options for the future of Northern Ireland Railways. Drawn up by a taskforce of three civil servants, the report was ordered following an assessment commissioned from A D Little by Translink on ...
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Hungarian builders give MÁV coaches a second lease of life
COMFORT standards for commuters in Budapest are improving with a programme of coach refurbishment being carried out by Hungarian State Railways’ former workshops at Dunakeszi, now a joint venture known as Adtranz M
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Regional rail services will strengthen economic ties
INTRO: Specially-built trains are spearheading the development of local passenger services across the Øresund link. Danish State Railways and Swedish State Railways have pooled their resources with the aim of growing the business to 4·8 million passengers a year by 2005BYLINE: Bjørn WahlstenHead of Passenger DivisionDanish State RailwaysINTEGRATING the ...
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Siegen heads bogie division
ADTRANZ has chosen the Siegen plant in Germany to head its Bogies Product Unit, which employs a total of 900 people with an annual turnover of DM500m. Responsible for design as well as production undertaken at Derby (Great Britain), Helsingborg (Sweden) and Winterthur (Switzerland), Siegen has a workforce of 300 ...
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Industry News
Europe: Engineering consultancies Holland Railconsult and TransTeC of Germany have agreed to co-operate in their respective domestic markets and elsewhere.Malaysia: Time Salam Engineering has been purchased by Noblemax Resources for 18m ringgits. Now known as Emrail Sdn Bhd, the company undertakes the design and construction of trackwork, signalling and civils, ...
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East and west
VISITING Spain last month with President Vladimir Putin, Russian Minister of Railways Nikolai Aksyonenko travelled to the Las Matas premises of Patentes Talgo to sign an agreement for a joint Spanish-Russian company. Destined to build gauge-convertible rolling stock for services between Russia and countries west of Belarus, the company will ...
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CTRL tunnel holed through
BRITAIN’s Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott was the principal guest at a holing-through ceremony in the 3·2 km North Downs Tunnel on the 74 km Section 1 of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link on June 7. Railtrack Chief Executive Gerald Corbett also attended.Speaking before a roadheader broke through the final ...