Main line rail industry news – Page 1382
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News
VAL Line 2 reaches Tourcoing
AUGUST 18 sees the start of revenue operation on the Lille metro Line 2 extension from Fort de Mons to Tourcoing Centre, adding 12·5 route-km and 16 stations to the network. The extension was formally handed over to operator Transpole by the Lille Urban Community on June 21, ready for ...
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Melbourne deals done
ON JULY 13 Victoria’s state Premier Jeff Kennett announced the award of a 15-year franchise to Melbourne Transport Enterprises to run Hillside Trains. Led by CGEA Transport Asia Pacific Ltd, MTE is to invest A$314m in 29 six-car trains for delivery from 2002 and A$75m in refurbishing 45 older EMUs. ...
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ú500m to boost LU
PUBLIC FUNDING to complete London Underground’s Jubilee line extension and continue investment in the rest of the network through to March 31 2001 was announced by Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott on July 15. The statement promised ’an extra £500m of resources’, but the nominal amount of new grant ...
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LIRR to GCT
MTA Long Island Rail Road issued a Notice to Proceed to the Parsons Transportation Group on July 6 for detailed design of the East Side Access which is intended to bring LIRR trains into New York’s Grand Central Terminal by 2009. LIRR trains would reach GCT via a branch from ...
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Railways Bill will force investment
A KEY ELEMENT of the Railways Bill introduced on July 7 by Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott is the power given to the Rail Regulator to direct ’facility owners’, notably Railtrack, to invest in projects deemed necessary by the new Strategic Rail Authority. The SRA is being established primarily ...
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News in Brief - August 1999
Asia: International freight services between Russia and China began using the new 40 km cross-border line between Makhalino and Hunchun during June. Canada: Alberta RailNet took over the 586 km ex-CN route from Swan Landing to Hythe and Tangent on June 27. CN and CP have agreed to halt ...
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Terminal decision
ON JUNE 21 Aéroports de Paris finally called a halt to testing with the 4·4 km SK-6000 peoplemover installed at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport. The cable-powered vehicles developed by Soulé were intended to run on two routes linking the airport’s terminals with the TGV and RER station, replacing the present ...
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Dropping the pilot
FOR THE PAST 12 years, the names Wisconsin Central Transportation Corp and Ed Burkhardt have been virtually synonymous. As visionary co-founder and dynamic Chairman, President & CEO, Burkhard's leadership from the front, attention to detail and customer care have transformed WCTC from a low-traffic regional to a multinational with lines ...
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Nürnberg - Erfurt dumped
GERMAN Transport Minister Franz Müntefering announced on July 7 that construction of the Nürnberg - Erfurt Neubaustrecke will be halted. Work in hand on the short section from Erfurt to Arnstadt will be completed and a spur built to link it to the existing Arnstadt - Saalfeld line. The line ...
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Sidetrack
INTRO: Hothouse specialThis summer is hot on the Baltic coast. Last month German Railway’s regional subsidiary DB Regio introduced a dedicated DiscoZug to carry young people to and from a regular Weekend Party in the Heizhouse discotheque at Parchim. According to DB Regio, the DiscoZug offers ’Fun und Action’. It ...
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PEOPLE
Edward A Burkhardt has resigned as Chairman, President, & Chief Executive Officer of Wisconsin Central Transportation Corp with effect from August 31 (p481). He is succeeded by Thomas F Power Jr, WC’s Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer for the past 12 years. J Reilly McCarren becomes President & ...
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Fudge or forget
IN THE next few weeks another maglev train is due to arrive at the Transrapid test site in the Emsland in north Germany. The latest in a long line of vehicles intended to prove that magnetic levitation for high speed service is commercially viable, TR08 is a three-car unit built ...
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Gayssot wins the day
HARK YE, all ye liberal-minded operators and budding open access companies! Put your plans and aspirations back in your filing cabinets, for ye have lost this year’s battle for market freedom on Europe’s railways.At a meeting of Europe’s transport ministers in Luxembourg in June, French representative Jean-Claude Gayssot succeeded in ...
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Effective IT will be the key to winning the war
AMONG the most impressive presentations at the IRCA-UIC seminar on Customer-oriented Information Technology held in Stockholm on July 5-6 was a demonstration of RailTracker. Using a live connection to the internet, Unctad’s Coll Hunter demonstrated the system’s ability to locate freight consignments anywhere in the world where the relevant software ...
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A tough agenda
MAKING his first public speech as Rail Regulator at the Railway Forum on July 9, Tom Winsor described Britain’s railway industry as ’emerging from a period of regulatory uncertainty while the [new Labour] government has been completing its spring clean, and preparing to publish the SRA Bill’ (p484). His speech ...
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Last minute deals
GOVERNMENT officials in Taiwan met representatives of Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp and banking representatives on July 14 in Taipei to seek a formula to rescue the project for a 345 km high speed line from Taipei to Kaohsiung (RG 7.99 p426). The outcome was a promise from Finance Minister ...
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Wide-bodied EMUs offer extra capacity at low cost
INTRO: Studies in Sweden have found that wide-bodied passenger and freight vehicles can be accommodated with only minor modifications to the existing loading gauge. For passenger trains capacity can be increased by 20 to 30% without many of the complications inherent in double-deck vehiclesBYLINE: Per Wadman and Anders Wermelin-Bj
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Guangzhou metro Line 1 services start
FULL revenue operation on the 18·5 km metro Line 1 in Guangzhou began on June 28. Limited passenger services have been running since February 16, following the formal completion of the line last December (RG 2.99 p71). Guangzhou becomes the fifth city in China with an operational metro. The ...
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News in Brief
Tel Aviv mass transit promoter NTA Ltd has appointed DeLeuw Cather to undertake preliminary design of its 18 km first line between Petah Tikwa, Tel Aviv and Bat Yam. The route is to be designed as a pre-metro light rail line suitable for conversion to heavy metro in future, but ...