All articles by Railway Gazette International – Page 1204
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News
Reaching heights of safety
ACCESS to the roofs and ends of rolling stock has been improved at Trenitalia’s Foggia and Foligno depots with the installation of Mover 50B self-propelled gantries from Ricci. Mover 50B gives safe access to the full length of a carriage or locomotive, eliminating the need to use ladders to reach ...
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Las Vegas monorail inaugurated
REVENUE SERVICE on the fully-automated Las Vegas Monorail began at 08.00 on July 15, after a formal opening the previous day and a night of partying at the seven stations.The 6·4 km line serves the hotels and casinos on the east side of the famed Strip from the Sahara to ...
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Letter from InnoTrans
35 countries represented in BerlinInnoTrans strengthens its presence in the international market From the 21st to the 24th September 2004, the leading firms from the world’s railway industry will be displaying their latest products and services at the Berlin trade fair ground. With foreign companies accounting for 45% of exhibitors, ...
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Madrid places mammoth orders
ON JUNE 23 the Madrid regional government announced ’the largest rolling stock contract in the history of the metro’, which will see a total of 698 cars supplied at a cost of €1·04bn. In addition to 52 wide-profile Series 9000 trainsets that AnsaldoBreda is supplying for €392m (RG 7.04 p393), ...
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Sprinter makes slow progress
ON JULY 15 the board of California’s North County Transit District voted to award the main construction contract for the Sprinter diesel light rail line between Oceanside and Escondido, but at the same time increased the project’s budget by $24m and formally delayed the launch of the half-hourly service by ...
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Researchers making waves
A TECHNIQUE for faster ultrasonic inspection of rails using low-frequency Rayleigh waves was described in a paper presented to the Railway Engineering conference in London on July 6 (p61).University of Warwick physicists Dr Steve Dixon, Dr Rachel Edwards and John Reed are generating the wide-band Rayleigh waves using pairs of ...
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Market
Argentina: The federal government and Ferrovías have signed an agreement to purchase 17 two-car DMUs from Portuguese Railways for 9·6m pesos, to be deployed on the metre-gauge Belgrano Norte commuter route from Buenos Aires to Villa Rosa. The first six trainsets are due to arrive in Argentina by the end ...
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Record traffic prompts restrictions
HAMMERED by unprecedented demand, Union Pacific has taken the drastic step of imposing restrictions on traffic in critical corridors through Iowa and Illinois, in parts of California and at key terminals.During the peak traffic period from mid-July to early November, intermodal and other shipments will be subject to an allocation ...
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Risalpur roll-out
PAKISTAN’S Minister of Railways Ghous Bux Maher visited Risalpur Locomotive Factory on June 11 to attend the roll-out of the first diesel locomotive assembled at the plant under a technology transfer agreement signed with China’s Dalian Locomotive Works in 2001.Pakistan Railways ordered 44 locomotives of 3500hp and 25 locomotives of ...
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Steam sell-out
DELAYED briefly pending the clarification of Sachsen state legislation on railway privatisation and open access, the sale of German Railway’s last steam-operated line was completed in mid-June.On July 21 DB handed over responsibility for the 750mm gauge L
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Sidetrack
CAPTION: To raise between A$700m and A$1bn for refurbishing run-down parts of the rail network in New South Wales, State Transport Minister Michael Costa, who also holds the Forestry portfolio, has persuaded his government colleagues to sell off state-owned forestry reserves. Around 230000ha stretching from Lithgow and Oberon to the ...
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SNCF turns to Verse
FRENCH National Railways has recently bought a Vortok International Verse unit for non-destructive measuring of the neutral temperature of rails.Verse allows the stress-free temperature to be measured to an accuracy of
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News
Swedish testing
INTERFLEET Technology is carrying out testing of Alstom X40 and X60 trains being supplied to Sweden.During June three weeks of dynamic testing were carried out on X40 double-deck EMUs for SJ inter-regional services, using instrumented wheelsets with accelerometers to assess the behaviour of a moving train. ’We go all over ...
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ARTC prepares to spend $A1·3bn
As forecast in RG 6.04 p317, Australia’s Federal Government published a White Paper on June 4 promising A$11·8bn for land transport spending over the next five years. On the same day, Australian Rail Track Corp signed a 60-year lease under which it takes over management of lines in New South ...
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News
SLRA to be abolished
SRI LANKAN Transport Minister Felix Perera announced at the end of May that the newly-elected government had decided to abolish the Sri Lanka Railway Authority set up by the previous administration and transfer its powers back to a revitalised Railways Department.Although the legislation creating SLRA was approved in 1993, the ...
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Bombardier accelerates plant closures
BOMBARDIER has announced that it will not re-open its mothballed US rolling stock assembly plant at Barre in Vermont, and is to sell the site.Opened in 1981 to help meet the Buy America requirements of federally-funded US rolling stock contracts, the plant was mothballed in November 2002 on the completion ...
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North-South link accord
THIS MONTH is due to see the publication of proposals for a joint venture which will finance and build a 511 km railway along Iran's Caspian Sea coast, as part of the North-South rail corridor being promoted by Russian Railways. The scheme is being developed by a working group set ...
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Bearing supplier in acquisitive mood
ROLLER bearing manufacturer SKF is ’very interested in acquisitions’ at the moment, according to Gottfried Kure, Marketing Director of the Railway Business Unit. Having acquired bearing reconditioning specialist Rolling Stock Supply & Services in Australia in 2003, the company is looking for similar opportunities to expand.SKF is realigning its strategic ...
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News
Supersite will advance techniques of wayside monitoring
Developed by the Wayside Monitoring Alliance, the Supersite condition monitoring station is designed to provide comprehensive data on passing wagons, using root cause analysis and predictive maintenance to prevent small defects leading to major problems