Main line rail industry news – Page 1418
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News
LU investment up
LONDON Transport Chief Executive Dennis Tunnicliffe announced on June 11 that LT would invest £1bn in the Underground and bus services over the next two years. The bulk of this will go on stations, track and signalling improvements. £480m will come from operating surpluses and £500m from government grants.The LT ...
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Sounder bi-levels ordered
ON JUNE 11 the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority authorised purchase of 18 bi-level cab cars and 20 coaches from Bombardier Transportation for the Seattle - Tacoma Sounder commuter rail service. The US$75m deal includes a $39·2m option for an extra 20 coaches for the extensions from Seattle to ...
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SNCF parcels to run at 200 km/h
FRET SNCF is planning to operate parcels trains at 200 km/h on its Paris Sud-Est high-speed line by the end of this year. SNCF subsidiary Sernam launched 160 km/h trains from Paris to Bordeaux and Toulouse and to Orange, near Avignon, last October (RG 10.97 p656). The Orange train already ...
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SL takes C20 option
STORSTOCKHOLMS Lokaltrafik has decided to order a further 75 Series C20 metro cars from Adtranz Sweden at a cost of SKr1·6bn. The move exercises an option in SL’s 1995 order for 75 cars, and lifts the value of the contract to SKr3·4bn. The three-section articulated units are destined to replace ...
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Eschede: questions and consequences
THE German ICE tragedy (p449) has shattered the excellent safety record of high speed rail travel. To date the only two serious accidents involving high speed trains both occurred last year. One was a collision in September at about 160 km/h between an IC125 and a freight train at Southall ...
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Derailment attempt
DETAILS have emerged of a recent attempt to sabotage the Tokaido shinkansen. Maintenance staff working on the track one day at the end of April found that 25 rail fastening bolts had been removed from a section of track on the Nagoya - Shin Osaka route between Maibara and Gifu ...
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AVE contracts
SPANISH high-speed line authority GIF awarded contracts on May 22 for the construction of a further 124 km of the Madrid - Barcelona high-speed line at a cost of Pts83·5bn. The package covers eight sections between Chiloeches and Calatayud near Zaragoza (RG 4.98 p253). Work is expected to start in ...
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Cheaper ways to cross the French Alps
AT THE end of May France’s Ministry of Transport published the findings of a report into development of its transalpine links with Italy. Drawn up by transport experts Christian Brossier, Jean-Didier Blanchet and Michel Gérard at the behest of Transport Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot, French Policy for Land Transport through the ...
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Joint venture to refurbish Riga station
REFURBISHMENT work is getting under way on the Central Railway Terminal in the Latvian capital Riga. The project is being undertaken by a Latvian-Norwegian joint venture at a cost understood to exceed US$6m.At the end of last year LDZ awarded a 10-year concession to the Varner Hakon Invest joint venture ...
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Railway closure error recognised
JAMAICA’S government in 1992 suspended all rail services on its 147 year old network. At the time only 206 of the 330 route-km was in use, and that was suffering badly from neglect and lack of maintenance. Inevitably, this was the cue for vandals to damage or destroy many of ...
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Forcing open access
SHORTLY before Europe’s environment and transport ministers convened in Chester in April, the European Commission issued a discussion document on open access. The latest proposals emanating from Brussels envisage that Europe’s railways must offer 5% of the rail freight market to new entrants, with this proportion rising in stages over ...
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Patience exhausted
BACK in 1992 Norwegian State Railways placed a NKr300m order for a small fleet of Type Di6 diesel locomotives from Krupp-MAK and Siemens for delivery in 1994-95. They arrived in Norway two years behind schedule.Since then the locos have had a chequered history, and at one stage they were returned ...
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Ground vibration boom
RAILWAY-generated ground vibrations can cause significant disturbance for residents of nearby buildings. As speeds rise, the intensity of vibrations generated by trains generally inceases. Recent theoretical investigations of ground vibrations from high-speed trains undertaken at Nottingham Trent University have contributed to a better understanding of why this should be. Researchers ...
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INTELLIGENCE
CAPTION: On May 1 Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajapayee formally ’dedicated’ the 760 km Konkan Railway in a ceremony at Ratnagiri (above). The line was opened to traffic on January 26 (RG 3.98 p138), but the ceremony could not be held until after the country’s general election. Konkan Railway ...
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INTELLIGENCE
CAPTION: Using the last of 14 IC125 high-speed trains refurbished for Midland Main Line, Adtranz (UK) ran a commemorative special on April 30 to mark the retirement of Chief Executive Stig Svärd - who was presented with a souvenir by MML Managing Director Nick Brown (left).First privately-ordered rolling stock off ...
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Concession renegotiated
TRENES de Buenos Aires became the first suburban operator to renegotiate its concession on April 16, when the Argentinian cabinet approved a 20-year extension to the contract ending in 2005. Although requiring approval from the parliamentary privatisation committee, the deal commits TBA to investing US$2·2bn in the Mitre and Sarmiento ...
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PadVIEW watches brakes
ARRAYS of video cameras installed below track next to carriage washers are monitoring disc brake pad wear on Kowloon - Canton Railway’s fleet of EMUs. In addition to the two KCR installations, Silverlink has one at its Bletchley depot in Great Britain.Computer analysis of the video image determines the thickness ...
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Chinese agenda
HUGE EFFORTS are being made this month to knit together a complex patchwork of finance deals and partnerships that would allow the US$17bn build-operate-and-transfer deal for the 345 km Taipei - Kaohsiung high speed line to go ahead. If it does, Taiwan High Speed Rail Consortium will be launched on ...
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CD trials AC coaches
CAPTION: SGP and MSV Studénka have delivered nine of these Ampz first-class coaches to Czech Railways for test running. The 200 km/h pressure-sealed and air-conditioned vehicles were ordered in 1995 for Kc398m (RG 10.95 p621), along with 26 second-class cars; all will be in service in IC and EC trains ...
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Metros
Austria: Wiener Lokalbahnen has ordered six three-section T2500 LRVs from BWS for Sch157m. Electrical equipment for the LRVs, due to enter service in September 2000, will be supplied by Adtranz, ELIN EBG and Siemens.Belarus: Insond of Austria is to participate in building the Rakauskaya - Kountsaushchyna section of the Minsk ...