Australia:Victoria’s Department of Infrastructure has appointed Scott Wilson to carry out a six-month review of Melbourne’s rail infrastructure assets, and to develop maintenance and renewal strategies.

Honeywell Building Solutions has been awarded a A$7·1m contract to provide an 800-camera CCTV monitoring and digital recording network for the stations in the Perth area, including the new Mandurah line.

Austria:Brenner Eisenbahn GmbH has awarded Porr Tunnelbau and Bilfinger Berger a €64m 20-month contract to build a 3·5 km tunnel at Brixlegg for the Lower Inn valley line (RG 4.04 p221).

Bangladesh:BR has ordered 100 petroleum tank wagons from Chinese firm Liaoning MEC Co Ltd at a cost of 220m taka.

Czech Republic:LOSTR Louny is building 400 Sggmrss six-axle container flats for Switzerland-based leasing company AAE.

Finland:Alcatel is to supply its 6151 LockTrac modular electronic interlocking and FieldTrac 6315 axle-counters for the 63track-km Kerava - Lahti cut-off in southern Finland under a €10m contract.

Germany:DB Systems GmbH has announced it is to adopt the Linux open-source computer operating system as its strategic server platform.

Greece:A joint venture of Comsa and Themeli has been awarded a €6·3m, 16-month contract to build a 3·8 km cut-off at Axios on the Athens - Thessaloniki route.

Ireland: Iarnród éireann has begin testing the first 16 of 40 EMU vehicles being delivered from Mitsui and Tokyu Car Corp to increase capacity on DART services. They are expected to enter service in August, with the remainder of the order following early next year. The original rolling stock will then be refurbished.

Italy:Piedmont regional operator GTT has placed a €37·5m order with Alstom for 10 three-car Coradia 160 km/h EMUs with options for a further nine. Delivery will be from October 2005 to April 2006, with the first sets entering service in December 2005.

Lithuania:Nortel Networks and Belam Riga have completed a €6·7m project to lay 276 km of lineside optic fibre linking Vilnius, Kaisiadorys and Radviliskis.

Namibia:This month TransNamib will take delivery of the first two of four Co-Co diesel locomotives built by ZiYang works in China. They are the first locos to be powered by Cummins V16 QSK60 engines rated at 2200hp at 1800rev/min.

Russia:Russian Railways has taken delivery of 100 open wagons with low maintenance polyurethane bearings from Ural Wagon Factory. The factory plans to turn out 1000 wagons per month by the autumn.

Thailand:State Railway of Thailand has awarded Bombardier a £39m contract to supply EbiLock 950 computer-based interlocking, lineside equipment and communications for four routes out of Bangkok totalling 174route-km with 33 stations.

Turkey:The contract for construction of the Marmaray cross-Bosporus tunnel (RG 5.04 p251) was signed on May 6. A start of work ceremony was held three days later.

United Kingdom:Contractor C Spenser Ltd has begun a £7m programme of platform and canopy modernisation and construction of a new waiting room at Sheffield station, as part of a £50m scheme to improve the station and its surrounding area.

Siemens Transportation Systems has signed a €40m contract to maintain the 21 Class 360 Desiro EMUs used on National Express Group’s One Great Eastern services. The seven-year contract will be extended by three years if the franchise is renewed.

Wien-based Frequentis is designing and supplying fixed equipment, including dispatcher terminals, switching and servers for Network Rail’s national GSM-R network.

USA: Harsco Track Technologies has been awarded a contract to supply four multi-unit track relaying trains for Indian Railways, augmenting three supplied earlier. HTT is also to supply a rail grinder to Mauritanian heavy-haul rail operator SNIM; total value of the two orders is put at around US$20m.

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