All Railway Gazette International articles in March 2005 – Page 3

  • News

    DEMU inspection ensures quality

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    NEXT month NedTrain Consulting will complete a contract awarded by HSBC Rail to monitor the construction of a fleet of inter-city DEMUs by Bombardier. The Class 222 Meridian units for British franchisee Midland Main Line and the similar four-car Pioneer sets for open-access operator Hull Trains are being built at ...

  • News

    Defrosted point

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    PRORAIL completed its first large-scale installation of Icesolution geothermal point heaters in sidings at Lelystad during December. Developed by Holland Rail Consult and Volker Stevin Rail & Traffic, Icesolution uses heat extracted from the ground to prevent the build-up of ice (RG 8.03 p513). The heaters come on only when ...

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    News

    Freightlink reviews Darwin traffic

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    NO SOONER had we reported Freightlink's delight with the first year's performance on the Adelaide - Darwin route (RG 2.05 p70) than contractor Mowlem announced in London that it was not satisfied. In a statement on February 3 Mowlem said 'it is now apparent that freight volumes on the Alice ...

  • News

    Jarvis completes Tube Lines sale

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    UKENGINEERING and PFI group Jarvis announced on January 29 that it had completed the sale of its one-third stake in Tube Lines to Amey for a total gross consideration of £146·8m. This includes £95·5m from Amey, release of existing cash collateral of £51m mostly relating to the assumption by Amey ...

  • News

    Competitors emerge for Renfe freight

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    CONTINENTAL Rail has become the second company to apply to the Spanish Ministry of Development’s Railways Directorate for a licence to operate freight trains on the national network.Owned by construction group ACS, Continental Rail currently has 25 employees and operates construction trains for the Madrid - Barcelona and Córdoba - ...

  • News

    Norwegian competition starts

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    THREE BIDDERS have submitted tenders for a 10-year contract to operate inter-city services on the Oslo - Gjøvik route from June 2006. Final bids were presented to the Ministry of Transport & Communications on February 7.The 123 km Gjøvikbanen is one of three pilot projects for the introduction of competition ...

  • News

    Coastal corridor

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    TENDERS are due this month for a 15-month contract to design three extensions to the M

  • News

    ClearVue through the fog

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    RAIN, mist and smoke degrade the quality of images produced by surveillance cameras, reducing their usefulness to operators. To tackle this problem, Manchester University spin-off company Dmist Technologies is commercialising a device it has developed to automatically enhance video.ClearVue is a compact electronic unit which sits between the camera and ...

  • News

    Suppliers take on the contractmaintenance challenge

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    INTRO: As train operators seek to reduce whole-life costs and improve reliability, they are increasingly contracting out responsibility for their rolling stockMAINTENANCE AND support services are becoming a crucial factor as competition starts to spread through the rail sector. Around the world, deregulation and privatisation are forcing both existing and ...

  • News

    Centenary Congress

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    As we prepare to celebrate our 100th birthday and mark 170 years of railway publishing, plans for our Centenary Congress on July 1 are well in hand.We have a first-class line-up of expert speakers who have been briefed to examine future developments in railway technology in the context of an ...

  • News

    Grande Ceinture Ouest reopened

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    SNCF has reinstated passenger services over a section of the orbital Grande Ceinture belt line round the west of Paris.The €91m project was completed at the end of last year, with trains entering commercial service with the timetable change in mid-December.The 9·8 km route runs from Saint-Germain-Grande-Ceinture to Saint-Germain-Bel-Air, Mareil-Marly, ...

  • News

    CCTV upgrade

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    ENHANCEMENTS to the closed-circuit television, public address, passenger information and help points on London Underground are included in a £150m contract which Public-Private-Partnership contractor Tube Lines has awarded to Marconi and Amey Infrastructure Services.The 13-year contract covers stations on the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines. An intelligent maintenance system will ...

  • News

    Tram camera

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    KETECH Systems is completing a programme to retrofit CCTV cameras on board the trams operating on the Croydon Tramlink network in London. Each of the 24 Bombardier vehicles is receiving two ceiling-mounted dome cameras in the passenger saloons as well as a camera in each of the cabs. Screens in ...

  • News

    Passenger News in Brief

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    Argentinean operator Ferrovias began test running of refurbished coaches with automatic doors on January 27. Platforms are to be raised at the 22 stations on the 52 km Retiro - Villa Rosa line to suit the vehicles, and Saldias station will be relocated 300m to the north.GO Transit is to ...

  • News

    Products in Brief

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    Madrid Metro is to fit over 1000 heavy-duty RFID tags to its trains and 36 sleeper-mounted readers with direction detection to the tracks. These will provide vehicle position information to change automatically the talk groups of onboard Tetra radios as trains move.TagMaster, SwedenY2K Aviation, Solutions E2 and Fiber Protector Norge ...

  • News

    Security in Brief

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    Background classical music is to be played over the public address systems of 35 London Underground stations maintained by Metronet in an effort to deter people not intending to travel from loitering in the stations. Tests at four District Line stations found that reports of physical and verbal abuse fell ...

  • News

    Thanlwin river road and rail bridge inaugurated

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    MYANMAR: The inauguration of Myanmar's longest bridge on February 5 has completed Myanma Railways' long coastal route serving Mon state in the southeast of the country. Linking Moktama and Mawlamyine over the Thanlwin river, the 27-span road and rail bridge is 2346m long, with approaches each side bringing the total ...

  • News

    Brakes renamed

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    WESTINGHOUSE Brakes UKLtd announced on February 11 that the company’s name had been changed to Knorr-Bremse Rail Systems (UK) Ltd.Knorr-Bremse will retain the Westinghouse Brakes and Westinghouse Platform Screen Doors brands for its international business. Knorr-Bremse Rail Systems will offer a maintenance support service for the UK and Ireland under ...

  • News

    Boring contract

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    CONTRACTS worth €80m have been awarded for a trial bore on the alignment of the proposed base tunnel for the Lyon - Torino high speed line.Lyon-Torino Ferroviaire, the bilateral joint venture company steering the project, announced on February 8 that it had selected a consortium led by CMC of Ravenna, ...

  • News

    iDTGV woos internet bookers

    2005-03-01T11:00:00Z

    SNCF announced on January 14 that the iDTGV project had struck a resounding chord with its clientele. It revealed that there had been 261000 visitors to the idtgv.com website, generating 57000 ticket sales in the first eight weeks of booking. The first 4000 seats were sold within 24h, and average ...