News in Brief

RZD is studying the introduction of piggyback services between St Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaliningrad and Moscow. An experimental Helsinki – Moscow service will be trialled later this year.

African Development Bank signed a €300m loan to finance upgrading of ONCF's Tanger – Marrakech corridor on March 17. The work will be undertaken in 2011-16 as part of a Morocco's national transport strategy; annual passenger traffic on the route is expected to increase from 16 million in 2010 to nearly 23·5 million from 2016.

RailAmerica has paid $12·7m to acquire the Three Notch, Wiregrass Central and Conecuh Valley short lines in Alabama from Gulf & Ohio Railways, a total of 112 km.

Arriva's former German businesses which DB sold to a consortium led by Italy's Ferrovie dello Stato in February have been branded Netinera.

in March Toronto regional transport agency Metrolinx completed the C$299m purchase of a section of CN's Kingston Subdivision between Toronto Union station and Pickering primarily used by GO Transit commuter services. As a result it now owns 61% of the routes used by GO Transit.

PKP Cargo began running its own trains in Germany in March, having previously used a third-party operator. Six trains a week are moving cars from the Fiat plant at Tychy near Katowice on behalf of the Mosolf logistics group.

After Baden-Württemberg Land elections saw the Christian Democrats defeated by a coalition of the Social Democratic and Green parties opposed to the €7bn Stuttgart 21 project, Deutsche Bahn announced on March 29 it was ceasing work pending discussions with the new government in May.

Hungarian state railway MÁV has produced a strategic plan which would see HF4·5bn spent on infrastructure modernisation and rolling stock acquisition in 2011-30; it is anticipated that EU sources would meet 65% of the costs.

Govia has accepted an optional two-year extension to the Integrated Kent franchise in southeast England. Operated under the name Southeastern, it will now run to March 31 2014.