Main line rail industry news – Page 1395
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PEOPLE
Dr Heinz Dürr has stepped down as Chairman of Deutsche Bahn AG. Dr Dieter Vogel has been nominated as his replacement.Juhani Kopperi has taken over as President of VR Ltd, the operating arm of Finland’s VR Group. He succeeds Erkki Hämäläinen. James R Van Epps has become Executive Manager of ...
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A testing moment
ON March 22 Bombardier Transportation opened a US$5m test centre for passenger rail vehicles at its Plattsburgh plant in New York state. Plattsburgh engineers now have available an 800m outdoor test track fitted with a third rail power supply and two 90m indoor test sections. Among the first vehicles ...
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Malpensa Express to open next month
FERROVIE NORD MILANO has brought forward the start of operations on its Malpensa Express airport service to May 30, from the planned date of July 1. The decision follows completion of tracklaying on the branch from Busto Arsizio on January 28. FNM President Norberto Achille expects the final fitting out ...
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Competition shunted off line
IT WOULD BE wrong to call the Great British Experiment in restructuring state-owned railways a failure. Estimates for the year to March 31 show passenger-km up 23% and freight tonne-km up 40% on 1994-95. Four decades have passed since passenger-km on Britain’s main line network last topped 35 billion. Nevertheless, ...
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Ludewig in a corner
LAST MONTH we drew attention to the plight of German Railway, which has become an unwelcome focus for media interest in the wake of the Eschede ICE disaster last year. When DB Chairman Dr Johannes Ludewig announced details of his company’s 1998 performance on March 3, his first remarks addressed ...
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Madrid metro extends again
ON MARCH 3 the President of the City of Madrid inaugurated a 2·8 km extension of metro Line 1, which has been built at a cost of Pts8·9bn. It is the eighth in a series of metro extensions to be opened in the Spanish capital over the last 15 months ...
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First West Rail E&M contracts
ON MARCH 8 Hong Kong’s Kowloon - Canton Railway Corp awarded the first two railway systems contracts for its West Rail project, valued at a total of HK$3·5bn. The 30·3 km West Rail Phase I linking Kowloon, Yuen Long and Tuen Mun is due to be completed in 2003. Worth ...
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Berlin U-Bahn needs repairs
BERLIN transport operator BVG has revealed that it needs to spend DM330m over the next five years for urgent repairs on the three U-Bahn routes serving the eastern part of the city. Decaying steelwork and water leaks have weakened the tunnel structures, and many stations are in need of major ...
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NJ Transit to go double-deck
NEW JERSEY Transit is to invest up to US$1·3bn in new rolling stock for its 12 rail corridors, increasing capacity by almost 50% between now and 2005. Initial proposals were presented to the NJ Transit board on March 11, although funding sources have yet to be identified.An initial order would ...
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Karaj opens
TEHRAN Urban & Suburban Railway Co has started revenue services on its 42 km outer-suburban feeder line linking Karaj to the Tehran metro Line 2 at Ayatollah Kashani. At the beginning of February TUSR announced that following trials the line would be open to traffic for 3h each day. Services ...
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Seattle sets LRT routes
SOUND TRANSIT has selected final alignments for the light rail lines in Tacoma and Seattle, which are due to open in 2001 and 2006. On February 12 the ST board picked an L-shaped route for the 2·6 km Tacoma line between the Tacoma Dome commuter parking garage and the Theatre ...
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Brisbane airport BOT
QUEENSLAND’s state government has awarded a build-operate-transfer concession to the Airtrain Citylink consortium for construction of an 8·5 km rail link to Brisbane airport at a cost of A$223m. Work is expected to take two years, followed by a 35-year operating period before the line is handed over to the ...
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Underground PPP bids soon
ON MARCH 15 London Transport announced that a formal procurement process for the London Underground Public-Private Partnership would start ’later in the spring’. Invitations to tender will be issued before the end of this year for three infrastructure companies - Sub Surface Lines, Infraco BCV (Bakerloo, Central, Victoria and Waterloo ...
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Stockholm LRV ready
STORSTOCKHOLMS Lokaltrafik, Bombardier Transportation and Adtranz formally unveiled on February 25 the first LRV for a 10·2 km orbital light rail line in the Swedish capital which opens in August. The pre-series car was demonstrated on the Adtranz test track at Västerås prior to delivery.SL has ordered 12 cars to ...
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TRAX makes progress
ON MARCH 3 the Utah legislature agreed to provide up to $50m of operating assistance over 10 years for Utah Transit Authority’s proposed west-east TRAX light rail line in Salt Lake City. This clears the way for a Federal Transit Authority grant of $480m to cover the construction cost of ...
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WMATA looks ahead
WITH COMPLETION of the US capital’s 166 km metro network approaching after 30 years, planners in Washington DC are discussing possible extensions, to serve new suburbs and raise daily ridership to 2 million.Favoured projects include a new Red line station at Florida and New York Avenues, extension of the Blue ...
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Operation Lifesaver is working
A SEMI-TRAILER laden with steel killed 11 passengers aboard Amtrak’s City of New Orleans when the driver apparently ignored flashing lights and drove around barriers at a level crossing in Bourbonnais, Illinois at 21.47 on March 15. More than 100 other passengers were injured. All the fatalities were in a ...
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Putting the brakes on
THE long-running saga of concession renegotiation in Argentina took a sudden and unexpected turn on February 3, when a last-minute legal challenge from consumer group UUC prevented the new contracts for the Mitre, Sarmiento and Urquiza commuter networks (RG 2.99 p65) in Buenos Aires from being signed into law. The ...
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Delhi resignalled
IN A 44h changeover during February, Indian Railways put into operation its largest route-relay interlocking, to control the junction at Old Delhi. Designed by Siemens using 11000 Series K-50 relays, it controls 1122 routes on 28 running lines, with 238 signals and 188 sets of points. The station currently handles ...
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Millipede to the rescue
THE NEWS that the Italian government has come up with an R87m loan to help fund rehabilitation of the Matsapha - Mpaka - Goba line (p197) comes as a welcome relief to Swaziland Railways’ Chief Executive Officer Gideon Mahlalela. Freight volumes have been falling sharply, which he suggests may be ...