Main line rail industry news – Page 1433
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News
High speed, regular interval
FRENCH National Railways’ long-distance passenger division is to relaunch its Paris - Lyon and Paris - Lille high-speed trains as a regular-interval shuttle service, christened TGV Navette. From the start of the winter timetable on September 28, departures from Paris Lyon and Lyon Part-Dieu will be on the hour, with ...
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Guiding the way
A SIX-MONTH trial of an electronic way-finding system to assist blind and partially-sighted passengers was launched at London Underground’s Golders Green station on July 17. The REACT system developed by GEC Marconi has been installed by the Joint Mobility Unit of the Royal National Institute for the Blind and the ...
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Tank-emptying made simple
German Railway’s Stuttgart works has produced a range of small retention tank emptying vehicles using pumped collection tanks from Sanivac.The battery-powered carts are small enough for convenient use at stations or carriage depots. The batteries power built-in pumps to transfer waste from the train’s tanks into a transfer tank on ...
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Metros
Argentina: Buenos Aires metro concessionaire Metrovías has awarded a US$70m contract to CMW Equipamentos of Brazil for installation of cab signalling to cut headways to 2min on four of Subte's five lines by 1999. Brazil: CBTU has negotiated R$27·5m in federal funds to complete the Minas Shopping - Sao Gabriel ...
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NY funds agreed
NEW YORK state officials unanimously approved a US$12bn improvement programme for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on July 12. NY City Transit will get $9bn, with Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road splitting the rest. The package will fund track and signal upgrades and station renovation throughout the subway network, and ...
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Letters
Nightstar in a dreamSir - Reports that sleeping car services from provincial UK cities to Paris and Brussels will be abandoned (RG 8.97 p497) renders the Channel Tunnel Night Stock sleeping cars a costly white elephant, even allowing for any future conversions.The idea of running sleeping car trains from regional ...
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Ladder sleepers perform well in tests
INTRO: Longitudinal precast concrete beams laid in stone ballast provide continuous support to the rails and reduced ground pressure for the same overall weight as conventional sleepersBYLINE: Dr Eng Hajime WakuiChief EngineerStructural Engineering GroupJapan Railway Technical Research InstituteFROM THE 1940s to the 1960s, experiments were carried out in France, Japan ...
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Alameda will ease LA port bottleneck
INTRO: Spectacular growth in trade across the Pacific has generated severe congestion on the railways which serve the southern Californian ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. William D Middleton describes the Alameda Corridor - a US$2bn construction project to cure congestion and provide capacity for future growthTHE SAN PEDRO ...
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Cross-Manila conflict
ON AUGUST 1 Philippine National Railways Assistant General Manager Rafael Jiminez called for the planned Manila - Calabarzon Express (MCX) commuter rail network and the Northrail link to Clark Air Base to be integrated to offer through services between north and south Luzon via central Manila. Developer Ayala Land Inc ...
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Finance
Czech Republic: The European Investment Bank (EIB) has agreed an Ecu200m loan towards upgrading the Czech section of the Warszawa - Wien corridor between Ostrava and Breclav.France: District de l’Agglomération de Montpellier has received a Fr375m loan from the EIB to fund construction of its planned 15 km light rail ...
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Natural disasters
SERIOUS flooding has damaged railways in both Europe and North America this summer, resulting in at least two passenger train derailments because of bridge collapses. One was Amtrak’s Southwest Chief, which left the track at around 145 km/h while traversing a damaged bridge over a desert gully in northwestern Arizona ...
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Stoneblower provides ballast maintenance solution
INTRO: A five-year development programme culminated in Britain’s infrastructure company Railtrack officially receiving the first fleet-build Stoneblower from Pandrol Jackson on June 13. Maintenance contractors are eager to receive further Stoneblowers to help them meet demands for high quality track at affordable cost. Andrew Hellawell saw the first machine in ...
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ERRI leads the quest to cut railway noise
INTRO: While railways can rightly claim many ’green’ credentials, noise reduction is one field where they need to make rapid progress. The European Rail Research Institute is tackling the issue urgently BYLINE: Brian Hemsworth BSc, CEng, FIOA and William Bird MA, CEng, MIMechE, MCIT*BYLINE: * Brian Hemsworth is Manager, Noise ...
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US suppliers convene in Kansas City
NORTH AMERICAN track maintenance experts and suppliers will be congregating in Kansas City, Missouri, this month, for the Expo 97 show organised by the Railway Engineering-Maintenance Suppliers Association. Running from September 7 to 10, Expo 97 will be held in the H Roe Bartle Hall of the Kansas City Convention ...
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Harder heads reduce rail wear
INTRO: Continuous casting of round billets has been combined with a Japanese head-hardening technique to enable the production in Pueblo of premium long-welded rails with a Brinell hardness of 390BYLINE: Mark McLeanManager, Rail ProductsCF&I Steel LPIN MAY this year CF&I Steel LP uprated the specification of its premium head-hardened rail ...
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Investigating the dynamic behaviour of rigid track
INTRO: Numerical simulations will augment practical trials for optimal design of future track structures. Dynamic analysis of a rigid track slab using the boundary element method has shown close correlation with measurements at test sites on the German Railway network BYLINE: Branislav Verbic, Günther Schmid, Heinz-Dieter K
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Video speeds line surveys
BR Business Systems has put together a package of three products, originally developed by different suppliers, which together provide a means of obtaining quickly detailed information on the location and condition of rail infrastructure.BR Business Systems officially launched TuScan, RouteScan and Infrastructure Video Survey (IVS) on a demonstration run on ...
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In Brief
n The US Surface Transportation Board has announced it will issue its decision on the break-up of Conrail between CSX and Norfolk Southern on April 14 next year, followed by a written ruling on June 8. The deadline for comment, protests and opposition evidence is October 21, followed by oral ...
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All-conquering maglev
SOME railway publicity managers could learn a thing or two from Transrapid International, the company set up to market and promote German maglev technology. If the stories published by sundry media from Sydney to Santiago are to be believed, we shall shortly see Transrapid vehicles whooshing businessmen across the Andes, ...