Main line rail industry news – Page 1415
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News
Via safety drive
VIA Rail Canada has launched a drive to improve its safety management, following the completion of a four-month investigation by two international experts on March 20. The wide-ranging, independent review was commissioned following a derailment of Via’s premier train, the Canadian, near Biggar, Saskatchewan, last September. Conducting the study were ...
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Berlin interchange rebuilt as Stadtbahn reopens
FROM May 24 German Railway reinstates full services over the 9 km Berlin Stadtbahn between Zoo and Hauptbahnhof, which from the same day reverts to its former name of Ostbahnhof. All four tracks, reconstructed using a ballastless design (right), will return to service, with main line and S-Bahn trains each ...
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Swedes to manage ZR revival
ZAMBIAN Transport & Communications Minister Rev Anoshi Chipawa confirmed on March 19 that a Swedish consultancy had been selected to manage and restructure Zambia Railways over the next 2 1??2 years. He revealed that an agreement with Hifab International AB had been signed in December, after four years of negotiations ...
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Transalpine freight accord signed
ON MARCH 30 Swiss Federal Railways signed an agreement with Italian State Railways at the Italian embassy in Bern, marking the formation of a joint venture rail freight company. Under the terms of an accord reached last August (RG 9.97 p572) the two operators will merge their two freight operations ...
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Shinkansen under way at last
CEREMONIES were held in Japan at the end of March to mark the formal start of work on three more shinkansen extensions, following their approval by Transport Minister Takao Fujii on March 12. Construction of the three routes is expected to be spread over 20 years because of limitations on ...
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More discounts and better service
FRENCH National Railways has changed its portfolio of discounted fares. This follows an initial step last June, when SNCF simplified its basic fares structure and launched two railcards designed to attract young people to travel by train. The latest changes are being made after a market research campaign in November ...
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Master Plan will add 900 km to IR network
ISRAEL RAILWAYS, encouraged by the public’s enthusiastic response to a steady programme of rolling stock modernisation and service expansion, has drawn up a Master Plan that could see nearly 900 km of new lines built by 2020 at a total cost of around US$3·7bn. The present 610 route-km network is ...
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MetroLink heads east
CONSTRUCTION work is getting under way on the first phase of the extension of the St Louis MetroLink light rail network to serve St Clair County (Illinois), following a ceremony at Belleville on March 6. Scheduled for completion in 2001, the 28 km line will run east from the existing ...
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Line 7 extended
MARCH 13 saw the inauguration of services on a 1·2 km extension of Madrid Metro Line 7 from Avenida de América to Gregorio Marañón, built at a cost of Pts3·7bn. The new section forms the first part of a 9·5 km extension west across the city centre and then northwest ...
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MF2000 proposals go in
APRIL 15 was the deadline for tenders to supply up to 1400 steel-wheeled metro cars to Paris Transport Authority, under an invitation to bid published in the Official Journal of the European Community on February 12. The MF2000 project covers a fleet of five-car trainsets to replace the existing MF67 ...
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Security restricts Tunnel’s potential
EUROTUNNEL’s financial restructuring was finally completed on April 8, 30 months after the company suspended interest payments on £8bn of bank debt. Executive Chairman Patrick Ponsolle said ’restructuring provides financial stability for the years to come’, but warned that ’this in itself is not sufficient’. The first quarter of 1998 ...
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INTELLIGENCE
Argentina: Trenes de Buenos Aires was due to begin a station refurbishment programme on the Mitre commuter network at the start of April. This includes the installation of automatic fare collection equipment, after its introduction to TBA’s Sarmiento route in January.Ferrosur Roca and Ferrocarril del Pacífico of Chile have introduced ...
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Two contracts for Line H
THE Buenos Aires city government expects to call tenders towards the end of this month for a contract covering civil works on its Line H metro project. The 10·3 km route from Retiro to Nueva Pompeya will be largely in tunnel (RG 1.98 p10), and Secretary of Production & Services ...
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STB considers the unthinkable
IT SEEMS that Union Pacific is not out of the soup yet. Indeed, some of the stories reaching our offices would suggest that progress towards solving the fearsome congestion problems that followed UP’s merger with Southern Pacific is far from encouraging. Take, for example, the one about a train of ...
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Shippers seek open access
’We need to respond. We can’t wait any longer. We have to act now.’ Linda Morgan, who chairs the US Surface Transportation Board, was speaking on April 3 at the end of a two-day public hearing to deal with shippers’ complaints about poor service and high charges. In the light ...
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Infrastructure separation: will it work?
Splitting railway infrastructure and operations is seen by politicians and economic gurus around the world as a panacea to problems of road-rail competition, poor cross-border service quality, and many other ills. But will the methods being adopted achieve the desired results? In an exclusive survey for Railway Gazette International, David ...
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Refer faces a busy year
INTRO: The Portuguese infrastructure authority is developing a charging structure this year as it works to complete major projects and define the ground rules for future investment. Refer President Dr Manuel Frasquilho outlined the challenges ahead to Robert PrestonBYLINE: Dr Manuel FrasquilhoPresidentReferON JANUARY 1 1999 Refer will take over the ...
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Pilgrim shuttles
MANY MOONS have passed since anyone has suggested reviving the Hedjaz Railway, built in 1901-08 from Damascus to the Islamic holy city of Medina in what is now Saudi Arabia. Although sections were famously destroyed by Lawrence of Arabia, substantial parts of the 1050mm gauge line are remarkably intact, and ...