Main line rail industry news – Page 1420
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Karachi MTP revived
GROUNDBREAKING ceremonies for Karachi’s long-planned light rail line are scheduled for August 14, according to Sindh senior minister Dr Farooq Sattar. He told the provincial assembly on January 2 that the Memorandum of Understanding for a 30-year BOT concession signed with a Canadian/Turkish consortium in January 1996 had been reactivated ...
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Next shinkansen corridors picked
JAPAN’s state owned JR Construction Corp announced on February 3 that it had selected routes for shinkansen extensions to Nagasaki and Sapporo (below). This paves the way for the start of environmental assessment, but construction is not envisaged for some years.The Nagasaki line will leave the Kyushu Shinkansen to Kagoshima ...
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Subte transfer
ARGENTINIAN President Carlos Menem has instructed Transport Secretary Armando Carnosa to transfer responsibility for the 20-year Subte metro operating concession to the city government. Detailed negotiations began on January 13, and by January 19 the federal government was understood to have accepted the city’s main demand - that 380m pesos ...
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JLE delayed
LONDON Underground confirmed on February 9 that the start of public services on the £2·1bn Jubilee line extension from Green Park to Stratford would be postponed to ’the spring of 1999’. LU Managing Director Dennis Tunnicliffe said the delay resulted from problems with the moving-block signalling designed to achieve a ...
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Olympic S-Bahn revived
BERLIN S-Bahn trains returned to the city’s famous Olympiastadion station on January 16, with the reinstatement of a further 4·8 km section of the network disused since 1980. The Westkreuz - Pichelsberg line serves the Charlottenburg quarter in the northwest of the city, with intermediate stations at Eichkamp, Heerstra§e and ...
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African venture moves closer
NEXT MONTH is due to see the formal launch of Trans-Africa Railway Corp, an international venture to operate rail freight services from Johannesburg to the countries of central and East Africa (RG 2.98 p82). Among TARC shareholders are Spoornet of South Africa and its joint venture concessionaire Comozar which includes ...
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Atlanta picks Breda cars
ON FEBRUARY 4 Italian rolling stock supplier Breda Costruzione Ferroviarie announced that it had won its largest ever international contract, to supply rolling stock for the Atlanta metro. The US$257m deal brokered by its US arm Breda Transportation Inc covers the provision of 100 new vehicles and the supply and ...
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IR independence
THE GOVERNMENT of Israel has introduced legislation to transfer control of the country’s railways from the Port Authority to a separate state-owned company. Intended to give the railways more independence and management flexibility, the move announced last year will efectively see IR revert to its pre-1988 status. Director-General A Uzani ...
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Third concession imminent
THE CONCESSION to operate Mexico’s 1479 km Southeast Railway, linking Mexico City with the ports of Veracruz and Coatzacoalcos on the Gulf of Mexico, was due to go out to tender last month. The government announced on January 30 that two consortia had already expressed interest in the last of ...
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Traffic surge and debt relief boost SNCF prospects
INTRO: After several years in the doldrums, French National Railways is starting to improve its financial performance. Increasing traffic during 1997 has boosted the balance sheet, and the transfer of historic debt to RFF has relieved the interest burden. Jean-Paul Masse looks at the story behind the figuresON JANUARY 8 ...
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Reform package authorised
MEETING on January 29, the Cabinet of the Russian Federation government headed by Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin formally approved the package of structural reforms for the Russian Railways network (RG 2.98 p83). However, with the agreement of the Minister of Railways Nikolai Aksyonenko, a timescale has only been agreed for ...
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Spending boost
NORFOLK Southern is to invest $903m on capital projects this year, compared to $781m in 1997. Of this, $149m will go towards the proposed Conrail acquisition. Major programmes include $279m for rail, sleepers, ballast and bridge replacement, up 4% from 1997, and $237m for rolling stock including 116 six-axle diesel ...
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WCML tilting trains closer
BRITISH inter-city operator Virgin Rail announced on February 13 that it had chosen a preferred bidder to supply 225 km/h tilting trains for its West Coast main line between London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow. Fiat Ferroviaria and GEC Alsthom will negotiate a £1bn package to provide around 60 seven-car ...
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UP starts the long haul back
SPEAKING in Omaha on January 19, Union Pacific Chairman & CEO Dick Davidson said that operations on his 56000 route-km network were back to near normal apart from the problem-plagued line between Houston and New Orleans. Average train speed during the first week in January improved to 23·5 km/h, the ...
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Turkish bids go in
FINAL bids are due on March 3 for a contract to build the planned 3 km extension of the Istanbul heavy metro from Taksim to Unkapan?µ. Including a bridge across the Golden Horn, the extension is provisionally costed at 36 trillion lire.Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality has prequalified nine consortia for the ...
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INTELLIGENCE
CAPTION: Ferrovie Nord Milano has outshopped the first of its refurbished EA750 series EMUs, which are being modified to operate on the cross-city Passante route (RG 1.98 p48). Apart from a new livery, the main change is to provide a switch to transfer the passenger emergency alarm to an audible ...
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Products In Brief
AEA Technology has supplied its accelerometer-based RideMon ride monitoring system to British train operator South West Trains. On-board equipment uses GPS to record the exact location of track giving rise to poor ride quality, and passes the information to a control centre where maps to assist rectification are produced on ...
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Turnout carrier goes to Spain
DESEC has supplied a TL70 tracklayer to infrastructure maintenance contractor TECSA, for track and turnout renewal work on the Renfe network in northern Spain. The TL70’s straddle carrier allows the correct geometry to be maintained when handling turnouts.DESEC Ltd, FinlandReader Enquiry Number 141
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Railtrack to the rescue
AS SOON as it became evident that LCR’s planned flotation in 1998 had little chance of success, discussions with Railtrack began last autumn in an effort to put a rescue package together. The original consortium members saw this as a way of preserving their interest in LCR.On February 12, Railtrack’s ...
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U-Bahn stock
STADTWERKE München has ordered 10 new U-Bahn trainsets for DM170m, to enter service at the end of 2000. The 115m long six-car trains will be fully open-plan inside with wide inter-car gangways for improved security and passenger flows. Consortium leader Siemens will supply the electrical equipment; mechanical parts will come ...