All articles by Railway Gazette International – Page 1326
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News
Industry News in Brief
Canada: Amsted Industries opened a Canadian arm on April 2. Based in Boucherville, Quebec, Amsted Canada Inc will provide combined sales and support for ASF-Keystone Inc, Brenco/QBS and Griffin Wheel Co. Czech Republic: CKD Vagonka's Ostrava-Vitkovice passenger rolling stock plant was opened by Prime Minister Milos Zeman on March 23. ...
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Law may impose ETCS in Britain
THE REPORT of the Joint Inquiry into Train Protection Systems by Lord Cullen and Professor Uff, published on March 29, calls on the British government to introduce regulations requiring all routes on which trains exceed 160 km/h to be fitted with full automatic train protection by 2008.They say that the ...
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Grenoble plans Line C
PLANNING for the construction of a third light rail route in Grenoble moved ahead last month, when a consortium led by Lyon-based Semaly was appointed to act as prime contractor; other partners are Ingerop, Attica and Sogreah. They will work with local transport authority SMTC and Territoires 38.Feasibility studies for ...
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Fully functional cab simulators
VIRGIN Trains unveiled three driver simulators when its Crewe training centre was officially opened on March 23.The £2m simulators are based on real train cabs, with all controls fully functional. The two Voyager diesel simulators were supplied by Oktal Technirail, and a Pendolino tilting train simulator by Corys. Each has ...
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Concession call
THE GOVERNMENTS of Senegal and Mali have called bids for a concession to operate the Dakar - Bamako line. Expressions of interest were invited by the end of April, and ’pre-selection’ documentation will be available this month. The process is being managed by a bi-national steering committee with representatives from ...
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EMA camera identifies rail defects
GAUGE corner cracking and other forms of rolling contact fatigue can be detected using a field gradient rail inspection camera developed by Newt International. The Lizard camera presents television-like pictures of flaws in the rail (or other engineering structures) and uses an odometer to record defect locations. It can see ...
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Spain’s high-speed challenge
HIGH SPEED rail travel has long since ceased to be an adventure. For more than a decade trains have run routinely at 300 km/h in France, while Japan, Belgium and Spain joined the club during the 1990s. The new Roma - Napoli line in Italy, Britain’s Channel Tunnel Rail Link, ...
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Challenges and opportunities change the face of urban transport
MOBILITY IS about more than just getting from one place to another. Today it is considered part of our quality of life, and nowhere is this more apparent than in major cities and their suburbs. It is also here that public transport plays a particularly important role, with rail and ...
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Strikes force change of course
TWO WEEKS of industrial action by drivers at French National Railways appeared to be drawing to a close on April 12 as officials at the FGAAC and SUD-Rail unions advised their members to return to work. After making major concessions on April 5 which had satisfied the larger unions such ...
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Measuring tunnel clearances faster
BYLINE: Dipl-Ing Bernhard MetzgerPlasser Measuring SystemsAN ACCURATE knowledge of loading gauge clearances is critical if a rail operator is to be certain that loads can be carried safely. But over time the clearance along a line can change for several reasons. The track can move out of position, perhaps being ...
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Siberian saga draws to a close
BACK IN the USSR in 1981, construction workers toiling to build the 15·3 km Severomuisky tunnel on the Baikal-Amur Magistral encountered fast-flowing underground rivers that rapidly halted work. As we said at the time, ’streams of hot and cold water mingled with sand to produce a treacherous quicksand that spelt ...
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Rails to conquer the Tibetan plateau
INTRO: Construction of a railway to Lhasa was started in 1958, but halted in the early 1980s until technical challenges could be overcome. Two decades later, Chinese Railways is poised to start work on an 1100 km railway through some of the world’s toughest terrainBYLINE: Wang Teh Lei and Xu ...
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Container special
NEW Zealand port authority Ports of Auckland has signed a 15-year agreement with Tranz Rail to operate a dedicated container train on the North Island Main Trunk. The train will handle import and export traffic to and from a new container terminal at Palmerston North, serving the south of the ...
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Tunnel contracts
THIS MONTH will see the start of work on two major tunnels on the Belgian high-speed network. Construction contracts were approved by the SNCB board at the beginning of April, following recommendations by the high-speed line project management subsidiary TUC Rail SA. Described as the biggest single civil engineering project ...
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Corridor management
GERMAN Railway announced on April 9 that its infrastructure business DB Netz AG was to restructure its activities on a corridor basis. The 37500 route-km network will be divided into 22 route corridors, in order to co-ordinate planning and maintenance work more efficiently. Over the next three years, DB Netz ...
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Uzbek cut-off
LAST MONTH was due to see the launch of regular freight services between Toshkent and northwestern Uzbekistan via Uchkuduk, following the inauguration of a new cut-off to avoid a section of former Soviet main line which now runs through Turkmenistan.Ceremonies were held in February to mark the completion of the ...
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Delhi digs deeper
CONSTRUCTION of the north-south underground metro line in Delhi is expected to get under way shortly, following the award of a Rs16·5bn turnkey design-and-build contract on March 20. Delhi Metro Rail Corp has selected a consortium including local firms Larsen & Toubro and Ircon, Dyckerhoff & Widmann of Germany, Samsung ...
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NewsIndustry's role in ERTMS
EUROPE: Unisig, a voluntary grouping of Siemens, Alstom, Adtranz, Invensys, Ansaldo and Alcatel, defined a minimum set of functions for ETCS/ERTMS that was approved on April 25 2000 by the European Commission, the International Union of Railways and the Union of European Railway Industries (Unife). This has become known as ...
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OverNight Express marries passengers with freight
INTRO: An innovative international service has been operating between Amsterdam and Milano for almost a year, and further routes are under discussion. Richard Hope finds that Netherlands Railways sees considerable potential for expansionCOMBINING time-sensitive freight with overnight sleeper trains has proved to be a commercially successful formula between Amsterdam and ...
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Finance
France: The European Investment Bank has granted RFF a 300m euro loan towards the construction of the first phase of TGV-Est between Vaires-sur-Marnes and Baudrécourt.India: Indian Railway Finance Corp is planning to raise Rs30bn to part finance the Railways’ 2001-02 Annual Plan through private placement of taxable bonds, lease financing ...