All Railway Gazette International articles in March 2015
All articles published this month.
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NewsTransdev wins Leipzig - Chemnitz operating contract
GERMANY: The Mittelsachsen and Leipzig transport authorities have selected Transdev subsidiary Mitteldeutsche Regiobahn to operate Leipzig – Geithain – Chemnitz passenger service E7 (currently RE6) from December 13 2015. The contract covers the operation of hourly services totalling around 1 million train-km/year. It runs until at least December 2023, ...
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NewsLGV Est Phase 2 completed
FRANCE: On March 31 SNCF President Guillaume Pepy joined SNCF Réseau President Jacques Rapoport and other dignitaries as the last rail was welded to mark the completion of construction work on Phase 2 of LGV Est, the high speed line between Paris and Strasbourg. Work on Phase 2, covering the ...
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NewsFoster + Partners to develop Jeddah metro design vision
SAUDI ARABIA: Foster + Partners is to develop the architectural vision for Jeddah’s city-wide public transport master plan under a contract signed by Prince Khalid Al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, Governor of Makkah Province, on March 30. The scope of the contract includes the design of the stations, trains and ...
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NewsAlpha Trains completes €1·25bn refinancing
ALPHA TRAINS: Rolling stock leasing company Alpha Trains closed a €1·25bn refinancing of three existing secured loan facilities on March 26. According to UBS which advised Alpha Trains, the transaction included the first investment grade continental European rolling stock bond issue and the first corporate securitisation of its nature in ...
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NewsGE names President
GE Transportation has appointed Thomas Konditi to head its Sub-Saharan Africa business as President & CEO. Having joined GE in 1994 he was most recently Chief Financial Officer of GE Africa, with responsibility for an operation spanning 25 countries. Konditi succeeds Tim Schweikert, who is moving to head up GE’s ...
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NewsLevel crossings to go as Harderwijk rebuilding approved
NETHERLANDS: Infrastructure manager ProRail has confirmed that the station at Harderwijk is to be rebuilt by the end of 2016, under an accord signed with national passenger operator NS, the town council and Gelderland province on March 26. As well as improving passenger facilities, the reconstruction will eliminate two level ...
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NewsPrototype EMU on test
RUSSIA: The first of two prototype EG2Tv electric multiple-units developed by Transmashholding’s Tver Carriage Works has arrived at the Shcherbinka test circuit near Moscow, where it is to undergo certification trials ready for potential series production. TMH is developing the EG2Tv as the basis for a new generation of EMUs ...
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NewsAutomatic EMU inspection system in new maintenance contract
UK: National Express Group has awarded Bombardier Transportation a contract to maintain the 74 Bombardier Class 357 Electrostar EMUs operated under the Essex Thameside franchise, which is branded c2c. The current franchise began in November 2014 and runs for 15 years. Bombardier’s contract was announced on March 30. It runs ...
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NewsSiemens Convergence Creators opens telecoms test lab
CROATIA: Siemens has opened a Railway Telecommunications Test & Integration Laboratory in Zagreb. The facility contains various types of main line and urban rail telecoms infrastructure, which can be adjusted to assist with developing and testing equipment or used for customer demonstrations and training. The equipment includes GSM-R and ...
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NewsSerco to sell Great Southern Rail
AUSTRALIA: Serco Group plc has agreed to sell its Great Southern Rail business to Sydney-based private equity firm Allegro Funds for an enterprise value and cash consideration of £2·5m. GSR operates tourist-focused passenger services including The Ghan, Indian Pacific and Overland, and Serco said a review undertaken last year ...
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NewsUnderstanding better bogies
RUSSIA: Following the inauguration of an initial facility in Chelyabinsk in 2013, wagon manufacturer United Wagon Company and Russian Railways have established five further bespoke training centres for advanced wheelset maintenance. Located on RZD’s Oktyabrskaya, Krasnoyarskaya and Zapadno-Sibirskaya railways, the jointly-managed facilities are intended to provide maintenance staff with detailed ...
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NewsFatigue testing with heavy loads
FRANCE: An agreement signed this month paves the way for tests to begin later this year in the Channel Tunnel on the durability of various track designs under heavy loads. The tests will be undertaken by Railenium, the railway research institute based in northern France, of which Eurotunnel is a ...
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NewsRift Valley Railways getting back on track
AFRICA: Four years after the restructuring of the Kenya-Uganda Railway concession, Rift Valley Railways announced in March that it had achieved all three of the Key Performance Indicators agreed with the two governments when the current shareholders took over. The first two targets involved clearing the outstanding concession fees and ...
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NewsMetrolinx awards depot PPP contract
CANADA: Provincial investment agency Infrastructure Ontario and Toronto transport authority Metrolinx announced on March 27 that they had awarded a C$860m contract to the Plenary Infrastructure ERMF consortium to design, build, finance and maintain the GO Transit East Rail Maintenance Facility in Whitby under a 30-year concession. According to Metrolinx, ...
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NewsLondon Underground takes over Croxley Rail Link project
UK: London Underground is to take over responsibility for the Croxley Rail Link project, under an agreement with the Department for Transport and Hertfordshire County Council which was formally announced on March 27. The project involves the diversion of the Metropolitan Line from its current Watford terminus to serve Watford ...
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NewsGE to supply 100 locomotives to Angola
ANGOLA: GE Transportation announced on March 27 that it had signed a contract to supply Instituto Nacional Dos Caminhos de Ferro Angola with 100 C30ACi locomotives. The six-axle 1 067 mm gauge diesel-electric locomotives with 12 cylinder 3 000 hp FDL-series engines are to be manufactured at GE’s Erie ...
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NewsBrussels launches north-south metro project
BELGIUM: Detailed engineering design and development work is to get underway shortly for the construction of a third metro route through the centre of Brussels, following approval of the scheme by the Brussels Capital Region administration on March 26. The fully-automated Bordet – Albert Line is expected to open for ...
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NewsBLS Cargo orders Vectron locomotives
SWITZERLAND: BLS Cargo announced an order for Siemens to supply 15 Vectron multi-system electric locomotives on March 27. They are scheduled to be delivered in three batches, with the first to enter traffic in the second half of 2016 and the last in 2018. The locomotives are to ...
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NewsMadrid Metro extended to Paco de Lucía
SPAIN: A 1·53 km extension of Madrid Metro Line 9 from Mirasierra to Paco de Lucía opened to traffic on March 25, taking the total number of stations on the network to 301. The station has been named after an artist who lived in the Mirasierra district until his death ...
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News€1·7bn Rhein-Ruhr-Express EMU order awarded
GERMANY: A ‘record-breaking’ order for Siemens to supply and maintain a fleet of 82 electric multiple-units for the Rhein-Ruhr-Express network was officially awarded on March 26 by a group of local transport authorities in the Rhein-Ruhr region. The company had been selected in February as preferred bidder ...