Main line rail industry news – Page 1359
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Balkan Talgo test
CROATIAN Railways has expressed interest in purchasing a fleet of five tilting trainsets to improve journey times on its inter-city routes from Zagreb to Split and Rijeka. HZ is currently looking for sources of finance for the investment. In co-operation with the commercial arm of the Spanish embassy in Zagreb, ...
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SBB rethinks
SWISS Federal Railways is reviewing the level of service provided at stations. Ideas range from setting up a subsidiary to run stations with a travel agency and a full range of ticketing to franchise partnerships with Kuoni. Smaller stations may be run by third parties, and ’public stations’ ...
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Acela must slow down
DESPITE the generous loading gauge normally available in North America, the New York - Boston schedule for Amtrak’s 240 km/h Acela Express will be 15min longer than the 3h planned for last December’s start of service. Amtrak’s latest estimate for the launch is ’the beginning of August’. Last month endurance ...
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Sloppy procedures caused Glenbrook crash
JUSTICE Peter McInerney criticises management for a collective failure to train and supervise operating staff in his report on the tail-end collision which killed seven and injured 51 at Glenbrook in New South Wales on December 2 1999 (RG 4.00 p212). He says 23 factors combined to cause the accident, ...
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Kasai warns against total sell-off
WITH A general election due in Japan this month, the President of Central Japan Railway Yoshiyuki Kasai has renewed his attack against government plans to sell its remaining shares in the JR companies. Although the government has already indicated that it does not expect to push through a bill for ...
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Shanghai Line 2 inaugurated
ON JUNE 11 Chinese government officials joined Shanghai Mayor Xu Kuang-di to inaugurate the first 16·3 km of the city’s second metro line. This section runs from Zhongshan Park to Long Dong Lu in the suburb of Pudong (RG 1.99 p27). Test running on Line 2 began last October using ...
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Roissy-CDG link deal
ON JUNE 13 the presidents of French National Railways, Réseau Ferré de France and Aéroports de Paris signed an agreement to develop a high-speed rail link to Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle Airport (RG 4.00 p205). The three companies have set up a Groupement d’Intérêt économique known as CDG-Express, which will be headed by ...
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Bratislava back
THIS MONTH is due to see the selection of a preferred option for an initial 10 km north - south metro line in the Slovak capital Bratislava. Construction of the line from Janíkov Dvor to Trnavske Moto via Suché Moto and the main station is expected to start next year ...
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Airport alliance
ON MAY 29 Bombardier Transportation signed a memorandum of agreement with Kumho Engineering & Construction to bid for construction of an automated light metro in the South Korean port of Pusan. The municipal government had called bids by June 7 for a 23·9 km rail link from the city centre ...
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Line H bidding starts Buenos Aires expansion
THE BUENOS AIRES city government is expected by the end of this month to award the first contracts for civil works on Line H, a north-south addition to the city’s metro network that will eventually link Retiro with Nueva Pompeya. Bidders were asked to quote a total price covering two ...
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U3 bidding soon
INTERNATIONAL tenders are to be called within the next two or three months for electrical and mechanical systems on Germany’s first purpose-built automated metro line. Verkehrs-Aktiengesellschaft Nürnberg has now put together the funding package for construction of U-Bahn Line U3, which is due to be operational by the end of ...
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Hannover S-Bahn opens
GERMAN Railway officially launched its latest S-Bahn network in Hannover on May 27, ahead of the start of public services with the summer timetable change the following day. It accounts for around DM1·6bn of the DM2bn investment made by DB and the Land of Nidersachsen in preparation for the opening ...
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Line 10 extends
MADRID City Council has selected two consortia led by Dragados y Construcciones and by NECSO and FCC for civil engineering on a southern extension of metro Line 10, at a cost of Pts25bn. The 3 km first stage of the extension, valued at Pts11bn, will run from Puerta de Bat
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Europe's freight wall cracks
NINE years after European transport ministers gingerly opened the gate to liberalised rail services with the signing of Directive 91/440 in Luxembourg, open access entrepreneurs and companies with substantial rail business are starting to exploit the opportunities. As well they might, given that the International Union of Combined Road-Rail Transport ...
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Night trains still alive
ZURICH-BASED overnight services operator CityNightLine, now part of DB Reise & Touristik’s subsidiary DB AutoZug GmbH, has turned a corner. With fares revenue up by more than 4% in 1999 at SFr56·8m, the number of passengers rose 6% to reach 394000. The company had been loss-making since its inception in ...
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Alstom gains control of Fiat
ON JUNE 20 Alstom and Fiat reached agreement for Alstom to take a 51% stake in the rolling stock subsidiary of the Italian company, Fiat Ferroviaria. The deal gives Alstom full access to Fiat’s tilting train technology, bogie designs and other components, and strengthens Alstom’s position in the Swiss and ...
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Single route grows into a network
WHEN the 471 km AVE line from Madrid to Sevilla opened on April 20 1992, high-speed rail travel was a novelty for Spain. Who dreamt then that Spain would now be committed to construction of a national high-speed network? Yet work on Madrid - Barcelona route is well advanced and ...
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Five more years of maglev tests needed
CENTRAL JAPAN Railway has announced a ’technical development plan’ for its superconducting maglev test line near Ohtsuki in Yamanashi prefecture. JR Central says that the Maglev Technological Practicality Evaluation Committee concluded in March that ’the Superconducting Maglev technology has the practicality for an ultra-high-speed mass transport system’, but it is ...
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Izmir celebrates metro start
WITH a fanfare of music and fireworks, the Mayor of Izmir Ahmet Piristina formally opened the first stage of the city's light metro network on May 22. Other participants in the celebrations included Trade & Industry Minister Kenan Tanrikulu, Finance Minister Sumer Oral, former Mayor Burhan Ozfatura, and Izmir ...
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Smallest state in privatisation vanguard
Estonia is on course to be the first former Soviet state to transfer rail operations to the private sector. Richard Hope reports keen bidding for rapidly growing transit freight through the port of Tallinn, although thereis a tussle over passenger subsidies