Main line rail industry news – Page 1392
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News
Athens Line 2 breakthrough
ON MARCH 26 a tunnel boring machine broke through into the station box at Agiou Ioanni station in the southeastern suburb of Neos Kosmos, marking the completion of tunnelling on Line 2 of the Athens Metro. Work on the Sepolia - Dafni line is late because boring was suspended for ...
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New entrants scoop LRV orders
SPANISH rolling stock builder Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles has been selected as preferred bidder to supply 54 light rail vehicles to Sacramento’s Regional Transit District. CAF bid US$124·9m compared to US$142m from local firm Siemens Transportation Systems which supplied RT’s 36 original cars. Other bidders were Kinki Sharyo of ...
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SMRT cards
LAST MONTH Singapore’s Land Transit Authority awarded an S$134·6m contract to ERG Ltd and Motorola Worldwide for the supply of an integrated smart card fare collection system covering all public transport on the island. Around 22000 readers and 5 million cards will be required by the time the project is ...
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Milano launches light metro
DETAILED planning has started for a fourth metro line in Milano. The 15 km route running from the southwest to the east of the city will serve a heavily-used bus corridor and relieve pressure on the parallel Line 1 between Cadorna and Pagano-Bisceglie. It will be totally underground.Metropolitana Milanese is ...
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Bilbao termini
SPANISH National Railways has completed a further rationalisation of local rail services in Bilbao, with the diversion of suburban routes C1 and C2 from Santurtzi and Muskiz into the main terminus at Abando (RG 3.97 p153). This has involved reconstruction of an orbital freight line and construction of a 600m ...
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Mandurah plan
PROPOSALS for an 82 km outer-suburban rail link between Perth and Mandurah have been endorsed by the Western Australia state government. Costed at A$940m, the line would bypass the existing commuter line through Fremantle to serve the rapidly-growing southern outer suburbs of Kwinana, Rockingham and Mandurah.State Premier Richard Court proposed ...
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Tasman is early
Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority Chairman Jim Lawson announced on April 5 that the $327m, 12·2 km Tasman West light rail line in San Jose, California, will open for revenue service on December 20. He said that the first extension since the initial 38·6 km route was completed in 1991 ...
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Railtrack boosts rolling 10-year plan to £27bn
THE 1999 Network Management Statement which Railtrack is required to publish each year suggests that total spending on Britain’s national network in the 10 years from April 1 1999 to March 31 2009 is expected to reach £27·1bn. This is 64% higher than the £16·5bn foreseen in the 1998 NMS. ...
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INTELLIGENCE
Australia: The Federal government has shortlisted three investment banks to advise on the planned privatisation of National Rail Corp, which is expected to raise around A$500m later this year.Great Southern Railway introduced a Sydney - Alice Springs Ghan on April 11. Traction for the passenger service is provided by National ...
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PEOPLE
As part of the Canadian National corporate restructuring to integrate Illinois Central, announced on April 14 (p261), President & Chief Executive Officer Paul M Tellier has named Michael Sabia as Executive Vice-President & Chief Financial Officer and E Hunter Harrison as Executive Vice-President & Chief Operating Officer. Senior Vice-President, Network ...
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Luggage blocker
LAST AUGUST we reported that German Railway and national airline Lufthansa had signed a Memorandum of Understanding aimed at switching short-haul domestic air traffic to rail. When Frankfurt Airport’s dedicated inter-city station opens on May 30, the trip by rail to Stuttgart will take only 1h 15min, while from 2002 ...
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Market
Argentina: The government is to call tenders for the design, construction and operation over 30 years of a rail link between the centre of Buenos Aires and Ezeiza Airport, with the fastest journey time over the 40 km not to exceed 40min. Initial proposals include an extension of metro Line ...
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Brenner basics
CONTAINER trains using the Brenner route across the Alps are taking up to 12h from close of loading in München to the first box being unloaded in Verona. A lorry can do the trip in 9h, and prices are typically 10 to 15% cheaper. So the Brenner motorway is crushingly ...
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Bundesboxes Berlin-bound
As Sidetrack was closing for press, ceremonies in Berlin on April 19 marked the formal opening of the new home of Germany’s government at the rebuilt Reichstag. The transfer of power from Bonn requires government departments to be dismantled and reassembled in their new home.The impact of the move on ...
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NS float in 2003
THE NETHERLANDS cabinet proposed at the end of March that national rail operator NS should be privatised in 2003, through a stock market flotation expected to raise at least 4bn guilders. In order to boost the sale price, NS will retain its monopoly of inter-city services for the next 10 ...
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Piggyback in favour after Mont-Blanc tunnel fire
RARELY indeed do road accidents attract significant media attention. But the catastrophic fire in the 11·6 km Franco-Italian Mont-Blanc road tunnel on March 24 certainly did - despite the dominance of Balkan war coverage. It also prompted serious calls for much more European freight to be moved by rail. Among ...
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Mutiny in the Mall
RICHARD WHITE has a problem. As General Manager of the Washington DC’s metro network, now nearing completion after 23 years, he saw a 70% increase in train failures in March and April compared to February. At the same time, daily ridership hit an all-time-high of 617000 passengers on April 7. ...
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Smart freight on the way
EUROPEAN freight trains are set to benefit from electronic braking controls. Trials in North America have demonstrated the advantages in terms of longer trains and higher productivity, and last year more than a dozen pilot projects were under way, including several revenue applications (RG 2.98 p95).On March 24 German Federal ...
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Dieter
CAPTION: One cost-effective way of reducing vandalism and deterring youths from hanging around at metro and urban railway stations is to broadcast classical music. Playing Bach and Beethoven over the public address system is a method tried and tested from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Toronto. But Montreal’s metro has taken the art ...