Main line rail industry news – Page 1372
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News
Royal opening completes Nordic triple
INTRO: Inauguration of Arlanda Express on November 24 saw a third Scandinavian capital launch its airport rail link. Chris Jackson joined the celebrationsA CRISP blanket of snow coated the streets of Stockholm as the guests gathered to celebrate the long-awaited opening of the city’s airport rail link. Politicians, promoters, financiers, ...
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Private finance brings the DLR to Lewisham
On November 22 Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott opened the 4·2 km Lewisham extension of London’s Docklands Light Railway, built and financed by a private-sector consortium that will maintain it until 2021. Providing direct access to the City of London, offices around Canary Wharf, and tourist attractions in Greenwich, ...
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India to install ATP on 15000 route-km
A RECOMMENDATION from India’s National Railway Safety Commission that automatic train protection should be installed on some 15000 route-km of main lines over the next seven years has been accepted by the government. The cost is likely to be around US$1bn.The decision to install ATP follows the head-on collision at ...
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Publications
Hidden Dangers - Railway Safety in the Era of Privatisationby Stanley HallPublication of this 128 page essay on safety could not have been better timed. In the wake of the hysteria that followed the Ladbroke Grove accident on October 5, this is a badly-needed sober assessment of railway safety on ...
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Finance
Argentina: As part of a debt restructuring programme, Grupo Soldati was expected to sell its Tren de la Costa light rail operation in Buenos Aires for US$100m. The line carried 441000 passengers between May and August last year, down 40% from the 742000 passengers carried in the same period in ...
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Letters
Resonance and corrugationSir - Your article ’Optimised ballastless track for HSL-Zuid’ (RG 11.99 p715) deals in particular with the influence of the so-called "pinned-pinned" resonance on formation of corrugation. It is stated (correctly) that a lighter rail section increases the receptance at high frequencies and reduces the frequency of the ...
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Industry News
Canada: Southern Alberta Institute of Technology has opened a new Centre for Rail Training & Technology in Calgary as part of a training alliance with Canadian Pacific Railway worth C$1m over five years.Europe: The European Commission is expected to announce in March the results of its investigation into the proposed ...
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INTELLIGENCE
Argentina: A consortium of Unión Ferroviaria and Cooperativa Industrial de Laguna Paiva finally took control of freight operations on the Belgrano Railway on November 16. Under a 30-year concession, the government assumed 15m pesos of debt and undertook to provide 45m pesos a year until 2004, when the new operators ...
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JLE at the heart of Millennium jamboree
AS LONDON geared up for spectacular festivities starting at 00.01 on January 1, London Underground’s Jubilee Line Extension was set to play a vital role in moving crowds to and from the Millennium Dome erected by the River Thames close to the station at North Greenwich. Services began running through ...
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Franchise replacement gets serious
IT HAS TAKEN the Labour government 31 months since the May 1997 election to reach the point where a serious effort can start to alter the uniquely complex structure created when British Rail was privatised by the Conservatives in 1992-97. The first three passenger franchises chosen for ’replacement’ were revealed ...
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Marseille tram extensions
Marseille city council was due to consider at the end of December a new urban transport plan incorporating up to 25 km of new light rail routes and extensions to the city’s metro system. On November 29 councillors voted to begin public consultation on modernising RTM’s 3 km Noailles - ...
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CD restructuring ratified
The Czech parliament passed a new Railway Act on November 4, paving the way for the transformation of Czech Railways into a shareholding company from April 1 2000. Drawn up by Transport Minister Antonín Peltr
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Surat link proposed
A 150 km standard-gauge railway has been selected as preferred option for moving coal from the Surat basin coalfield in southeastern Queensland to Tarong power station, where the government authorised a 450MW increase in generating capacity on November 15. The line is being promoted by Sudaw Developments Ltd as part ...
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Malawi network handed over
DECEMBER 1 saw the start of operations at Central East African Railways Ltd, the private-sector concessionaire formed to run the 797 km Malawi rail network. With its headquarters in Blantyre, CEAR is led by Pittsburgh-based Railroad Development Corp - which claims it is the first direct investment in Africa ...
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Belgians to run CFR upgrade
MODERNISATION of Romania’s principal east-west rail corridor over the next three years is to be managed by a consortium of Belgian high-speed line promoter TUC Rail SA and Brussels-based consultancy Transurb Consult. CFR SA General Manager Viorel Simut signed a US$9·2m technical assistance contract on November 16, together with TUC ...
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High speed Talgo debuts
Patentes Talgo and Adtranz announced on November 22 that their 350 km/h protoype trainset will be completed in February. Talgo CEO Francisco de Lorenzo said that ’Spain now has its own high speed design’, the fruit of a Pts6bn investment by the company. Designed as a contender for the Madrid ...
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Reading matters
READERS may be aware that Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott whose portfolio includes transport, has attracted rather a lot of flak recently. Prescott has been struggling to reconcile the conflicting demands of a policy backing public transport and a Prime Minister terrified of losing votes from discontented motorists.Concerned ...
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Matra wins New York TBTC
NEW YORK’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority confirmed on November 23 that it had selected a consortium of Matra Transport International, Siemens Transportation Systems, Union Switch & Signal and Telephonics to install transmission-based train control on the New York City Transit subway network.The consortium is offering a derivative of the automatic train ...
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TRAX overwhelmed
UTAH Transit Authority’s 24 km TRAX light rail line between Salt Lake City and Sandy was opened on December 4. Joining UTA Chairman Jim Clark and General Manager John Inglish for the ceremonies marking early completion of the $312m line were acting Federal Transit Administrator Nuria Fernandez, Utah Governor Mike ...
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Railtrack out of London PPP race
On November 30 Britain’s Department of the Environment, Transport & the Regions announced that ’the government, Railtrack and London Transport have together agreed not to proceed with discussions about the possibility of Railtrack taking on the responsibility for upgrading and maintaining the sub-surface Tube lines and linking them to the ...