Main line rail industry news – Page 1358
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SJ takes West Coast back
SWEDISH State Railway resumed operation of the West Coast corridor between G
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Broad gauge extends
THIS MONTH, India’s Northeast Frontier Railway is due to complete a feasibility study for a fourth rail bridge across the Brahmaputra, linking Bogibeel and Dibrugarh. According to General Manager, Construction, G P Madan, NFR has spent over Rs7bn on infrastructure works in the last three years and has works in ...
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HCM upgrade
VIETNAM Railways has commissioned Japan Transportation Consultants and Southern Transport Engineering & Design Inc to undertake a feasibility study for a 47·2 km reconstruction of the southern end of its main line into Ho Chi Minh City through the province of Dong Nai. DSVN hopes to fund the project with ...
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Ministers back base tunnel
MEETING in Modane on May 15, French Transport Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot and his Italian counterpart Pier-Luigi Bersani agreed to push ahead with work on the Mont Cenis base tunnel and the Lyon - Torino high-speed line as part of a programme to divert transalpine traffic from road to rail. Despite ...
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Refurbishment funded
PAKISTAN Railways’ efforts to modernise its operations received a boost at the end of April, when the government approved a national investment package totalling Rs10bn. This included several railway projects identified as a priority by PR Chairman Javed Ashraf, notably the refurbishing of 240 coaches and 55 diesel locos. PR ...
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ZSR starts 160 km/h works
SLOVAK Republic Railways is to invest KS7·8bn this year on the modernisation of its international corridors, of which KS3bn will come from its own resources. In mid-April ZSR began work on the modernisation of the 39 km between Bratislava Raca and Trnava, which forms part of European Corridor V linking ...
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Privatisation sequel is worth reading
SUCCESSOR to our annual Rail Business Report, this inaugural edition of Rail Investment is designed to meet the need for an authoritative publication covering trends in railway spending. As in Rail Business Report, we include the World Bank's railway performance database which offers a valuable picture of ...
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Sustainable transport demands strong rail investment
BYLINE: Philippe RoumeguèreChief Executive, International Union of Railways (UIC)RIGHT ACROSS the world, concern has been growing about the role of transport in society and the part that each mode has to play. A balance must be struck between meeting the needs of the economy and the increasingly serious effects ...
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Level 3 slips over the horizon
THE PRESENTATION in Madrid on April 25 to Loyola de Palacio of specifications setting out the functional and technical requirements for the European Rail Traffic Management System signals the success of initiatives launched in 1998 to rescue ERTMS and the GSM-R based European Train Control System from stagnation. As Vice-President ...
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Catalunya awards light rail DBOM
BARCELONA transport authority Autoritat del Transport Metropolita Spa announced on April 27 that it had selected the Group TramMet consortium for a 25-year concession to finance, design, build and operate a 16·8 km light rail line from Diagonal to Boix Llobregat. Promoted by ATM with the support of the Catalunya ...
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Kolkata expands
A RANGE of development proposals for the Kolkata suburban network were outlined by India’s Railways Minister Ms Matama Banerjee on April 30, when she laid the foundation stone for a 5·8 km southern extension of the city’s Circular Railway. Rs860m has been allocated for the line from Princep Ghat ...
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Puget Sound makes progress
GROUNDBREAKING ceremonies were held in Seattle on April 26 for a $43m maintenance depot to be shared by Amtrak and Sound Transit. Amtrak is contributing $21m, and Washington State will invest $22m. Opening in 2003, the depot will service Amtrak’s Coast Starlight, Empire Builder, the Cascade Talgos, and the ...
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Hamburg studies light rail
CITIZENS in the German port of Hamburg were due to make submissions by May 15 on priority measures to be put in place for the city’s planned light rail network. The formal consultation paves the way for award of a contract for detailed design of the first route.The city is ...
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Canary takes off
TENDERS are to be invited for construction of a light rail network on Tenerife, following a decision by the Canary Islands regional government in March to push ahead with detailed design. Totalling Pts200bn, the lines are expected to enter service from 2006 onwards.Work could start next year on a short ...
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Six new lines in RDS2
HONG KONG is to get six more rail links by 2015, according to the long-awaited Second Railway Development Study which was published on May 16. Transport Secretary Nicholas Ng Wing-fui said the HK$80bn programme would see 70% of the population and 80% of all workplaces within 1 km of a ...
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Madrid - Barcelona race
SPANISH National Railways announced on May 10 that five groups had registered to supply between 26 and 40 high speed trains for the 350 km/h line from Madrid to Barcelona. Renfe is evaluating the proposals and will shortly issue a formal invitation to bid, giving suppliers three months to respond. ...
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Bremen plans dual-mode LRT
CONSULTANTS have recommended a two-stage programme to launch through running of Bremen tram services onto regional rail routes. Depending on the size of the dual-mode network, traffic is estimated to increase by up to 50%.Because through running can be introduced at relatively low cost on routes serving Nordenham and Oldenburg, ...
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Operators turn professional
MAY 11 saw the launch in London of the Institution of Railway Operators. Set up to give formal recognition to the profession of railway operating, IRO aims to recruit 5000 members within five years, according to its first Chairman, the Shadow Strategic Rail Authority’s Technical Director Richard Morris. He told ...
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All in a name
SIX FORMER and current executives of Eurotunnel, including former Co-Chairman Sir Alastair Morton, who is now Chairman of Britain’s Shadow Strategic Rail Authority, have become mixed up in a French legal investigation instigated by a group of disgruntled Eurotunnel shareholders known as Adacte. This organisation is querying the financial forecasts ...
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Branches under threat
IT WAS DISINGENUOUS of German Railway Chairman Hartmut Mehdorn to imply at DB’s 1999 annual results press conference on May 10 in Berlin (p333) that Austrian Federal Railways’ announcement the previous day about plans to withdraw rail services from a quarter of its 5653 km network pointed the way ahead. ...