All Railway Gazette International articles in March 1999
All articles published this month.
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News
June 1 is Day 1
ON JANUARY 20, Norfolk Southern and CSX announced that they had set June 1 as the target date to implement their $10bn takeover and breakup of Conrail. The so-called Day 1 had been anticipated last September, but when the two railways took control of Conrail on August 23 there were ...
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25 kV on moving bridges
WITH AMTRAK’s Northeast Corridor electrification between New Haven and Boston due to come into service later this year, teams from Balfour Beatty Construction Inc and its joint venture partner Mass Electric Construction Co are currently finishing the installation of the 25 kV catenary. They faced a major challenge in wiring ...
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AC diesels head CPR investment drive
BYLINE: Rob RitchiePresidentCanadian Pacific RailwayCanadian Pacific Railway begins the last year of the 20th century with a substantially improved cost structure and profitability, a rejuvenated infrastructure, and a service level that is turning heads in the industry and winning business from our competitors. Our key operating measures - on-time performance, ...
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Alstom aims to help build a virtuous circle
INTRO: Eight acquisitions in two years have added more expertise to Alstom Transport’s armoury in the battle for domination of the world railway equipment market. Murray Hughes found that Alstom Transport President André Navarri’s philosophy was ’simply growing the business’BYLINE: André NavarriPresidentAlstom Transport PRESIDENT of Alstom Transport André Navarri was ...
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Renfe rolls out Arco and Alaris
FEBRUARY 16 saw Renfe introduce Alaris tilting trains on the Madrid - Valencia inter-city corridor. The 10 sets built by Alstom-Fiat are based on the Pendolino design, and were formerly known as IC 2000 (RG 10.98 p693). Six trains a day each way will run at up to 200 km/h, ...
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AlpTransit's first blast
A CEREMONY on February 4 marked the start of work on the 800m Sedrun access shaft for the Gotthard base tunnel. Railway Gazette International joined invited guests to witness chief engineer for the Sedrun tunnel section Jakob Blickenstorfer detonate the first explosive charges deep within a mountainside near Sedrun. A ...
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RZD launches Blue Arrow
RUSSIAN Railways has put into traffic a second ER200 high-speed train, and accelerated the premier inter-city service between Moscow and St Petersburg. Introduction of the additional 200 km/h trainset, known as the Blue Arrow, on January 14 has allowed the original ER200 to be taken out of use for a ...
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Wien avoiding line under way
LAST MONTH was due to see work start on a long-planned chord through the southwest suburbs of Wien, allowing freight trains to avoid the city. Starting at Hadersdorf-Weidlingau on the Westbahn, the line runs in the 13 km Lainzer tunnel to Hetzendorf on the Südbahn. A spur continues southeast to ...
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Sydneysiders await Millennium double-deckers
INTRO: From 2001 commuters in Australia’s largest city are set to benefit from a fleet of 20 double-deck trains to be built and maintained by Clyde Engineering. These fourth generation Millennium trains will continue the progress achieved by the Tangara fleet, with the latest traction equipmentBYLINE: Colin F G Butcher*Director,ACB ...
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Rivals back competing routes to viability
ANYONE seeking an insight into high level thinking on the strategic plans of European Railways would have been well rewarded by attending the EuroRail Congress ’99, staged in Paris on January 26-28 by AiC Worldwide. Delegates were treated to agenda-setting presentations and forthright views from senior figures on competition, open ...
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DB back on the defensive
DESPITE the widely-trumpeted reform programme that puts German Railway on a fresh footing with a holding company and quasi-independent subsidiaries, the organisation’s trials and tribulations are far from over. Problems with the Class 611 tilting diesel sets continue, and the latest timetables show a 20min journey time increase on the ...
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More Madrid - Barcelona contracts let
On February 12 the Spanish government gave its approval for the letting of a Pts4·4bn contract for civil works on the 23 km Aldeanueva de Guadalajara - Gajanejos section of the Madrid - Barcelona high speed line. The contract is expected to take 14 months.High speed infrastructure authority Gestor de ...
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BART cars refurbished
ON JANUARY 14, San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit District unveiled the first three of 439 Rohr cars to be remanufactured by Adtranz in Pittsburg, under a $454m contract due to be completed in 2002. Built more than 25 years ago, the cars are being converted from DC to AC ...
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Paris ticketing roll-out begins
Schlumberger has begun deployment of a new design of ticket-issuing terminal across all RATP’s stations. A pilot installation of 40 machines at key stations on the Paris Métro has proved successful, and so Schlumberger has begun installation at all other stations; when complete, there will be over 1000 machines in ...
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Berlin S-Bahn offers panoramic tours
CAPTION: A three-car Panorama S-Bahn trainset converted from 1943-built Class 477 vehicles has been unveiled at the S-Bahn Berlin GmbH main workshop at Sch
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Darwin bidders get serious
All three groups chosen to submit bids by March 31 to build and operate the 1410 km railway from Alice Springs to Darwin have recruited new members, raising hopes that the project may finally go ahead. The successful bidder would also lease the line from Alice to Tarcoola on the ...
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Partnerships to boost income
ON JANUARY 20 Amtrak President & CEO George Warrington announced a series of ’business partnerships’ intended to cut costs and generate extra revenue, as part of a programme to enable the US national passenger operator to break even by 2002. A seven-year contract with airline caterer Dobbs International Services will ...
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Kaohsiung BOT moves closer
CONSTRUCTION of the long-planned four-line metro in the Taiwanese second city Kaohsiung is set to get under way in 2001, with two routes totalling 42·7 km now expected to open in stages between 2004 and 2007. Kaohsiung has grown rapidly in recent years, and now has over 3 million inhabitants. ...
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Ferroban moves to Campinas
RESTRUCTURING is getting under way at the former São Paulo state railway Fepasa following its transfer to the Ferrovias Bandeirantes SA concessionaire on January 1. Ferroban President José Lindoso de Albuquerque announced on January 24 that the board of directors had decided to move the railway’s headquarters to Campinas, where ...
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Deregulation changes the face of Canadian railroading
Since the Canada Transportation Act came into force in 1996, the country's rail industry has undergone a dramatic transformation, with modernisation and restructuring at the two big national operators matched by a mushrooming of small and medium-sized feeder railways