All articles by Railway Gazette International – Page 1391
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News
ONCFM awards signalling deal
MOROCCAN National Railways awarded a contract worth 53m euros to Alstom Transport on March 8 for resignalling work over the next four years. The contract covers 550 km from Kenitra to Oujda, which is electrified as far as Fes, and 200 km of the southern line from Sidi El ...
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First blast launches Gotthard base tunnel
Sedrun's access shaft was the scene of the first blasting work for the Gotthard base tunnel on February 4. Andrew Hellawell was there to witness it first hand
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Berlin seen as centre of signalling expertise
Stuttgart-based Alcatel SEL has picked Berlin as a key location for development of radio-based train control systems. According to Friedrich Smaxwil, Chief Executive of Alcatel SEL’s transport business, between DM100m and DM120m may be spent in the next five to 10 years on developing the European Rail Traffic Management System ...
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Berlin U-Bahn needs repairs
BERLIN transport operator BVG has revealed that it needs to spend DM330m over the next five years for urgent repairs on the three U-Bahn routes serving the eastern part of the city. Decaying steelwork and water leaks have weakened the tunnel structures, and many stations are in need of major ...
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Underground PPP bids soon
ON MARCH 15 London Transport announced that a formal procurement process for the London Underground Public-Private Partnership would start ’later in the spring’. Invitations to tender will be issued before the end of this year for three infrastructure companies - Sub Surface Lines, Infraco BCV (Bakerloo, Central, Victoria and Waterloo ...
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Dutch bloomers
NS Groep NV has raised its net operating profit by just over 20% to 197m guilders, largely by improved performance from the passenger business NS Reizigers. Revenue grew by 9%, but operating costs fell, despite a 5% increase in the number of trains running from May 1998, and a fares ...
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BNSF boosts spending
ON MARCH 8 Burlington Northern Santa Fe announced a $2·5bn capital spending plan for 1999. This is a similar amount to recent previous years, so that by the end of 1999 BNSF will have invested almost $10bn over a four-year period.Nearly a third of the 1999 programme, $812m, will go ...
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TheTrainLine brings online booking to Britain
BRITAIN’s first online rail ticketing system went live on Thursday February 25. Tickets and seat reservations where available can be ordered with secure payment over the internet for services operated by all 25 British franchises using software developed by Virgin Trains and IT specialists Cap Gemini. TheTrainLine is part of ...
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Putting the brakes on
THE long-running saga of concession renegotiation in Argentina took a sudden and unexpected turn on February 3, when a last-minute legal challenge from consumer group UUC prevented the new contracts for the Mitre, Sarmiento and Urquiza commuter networks (RG 2.99 p65) in Buenos Aires from being signed into law. The ...
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Competition shunted off line
IT WOULD BE wrong to call the Great British Experiment in restructuring state-owned railways a failure. Estimates for the year to March 31 show passenger-km up 23% and freight tonne-km up 40% on 1994-95. Four decades have passed since passenger-km on Britain’s main line network last topped 35 billion. Nevertheless, ...
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V/Line Freight concessioned
THE SUCCESSFUL bidder to run rail freight in the Australian state of Victoria was announced by state Premier Jeff Kennett on February 22. The Freight Victoria consortium has agreed to pay just over A$163m for V/Line Freight under a 15-year renewable lease to operate and maintain the rail network outside ...
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First West Rail E&M contracts
ON MARCH 8 Hong Kong’s Kowloon - Canton Railway Corp awarded the first two railway systems contracts for its West Rail project, valued at a total of HK$3·5bn. The 30·3 km West Rail Phase I linking Kowloon, Yuen Long and Tuen Mun is due to be completed in 2003. Worth ...
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Ludewig in a corner
LAST MONTH we drew attention to the plight of German Railway, which has become an unwelcome focus for media interest in the wake of the Eschede ICE disaster last year. When DB Chairman Dr Johannes Ludewig announced details of his company’s 1998 performance on March 3, his first remarks addressed ...
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Cross-border link
CONSTRUCTION of the 44 km cross-border link from Zalalovo in Hungary to Murska Sobota in Slovenia was due to get under way during March, for completion by the end of 2000. Part of the European Union’s Corridor V linking Italy and Ukraine, it is expected to cost HF22·5bn. Part of ...
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Crossfleet to maintain VCC trains
Under the terms of a £1bn contract for a fleet of new tilting and non-tilting diesel multiple-units, Bombardier Transportation has taken over responsibility for maintenance of the entire Virgin CrossCountry fleet for the rest of the 15-year franchise to 2012
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DB prepares to launch Metropolitan
GERMAN RAILWAY will cautiously test the waters of privatisation next month. They will probably not be too cold, for the experiment falls well short of a true handover to the private sector, but it is a venture in that direction. DB has set up Metropolitan Express Train GmbH as a ...
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Nacala deal
OPERATION of Mozambique's 700 km northern line between the Malawi border at Nayuci and the port of Nacala is set to be handed over to a private sector consortium on October 1. State-owned ports and railway authority CFM has selected the Sociedade de Desenvolvimente do Corredor de Nacala as preferred ...
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Eurotunnel declares net profit
Executive Chairman Patrick Ponsolle announced on March 15 that Eurotunnel had achieved a net profit of £64m in 1998. This included exceptional items from the financial restructuring, but the underlying loss was cut by almost £400m to £215m. An operating profit of £184m enabled 69% of the interest due on ...
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Delhi resignalled
IN A 44h changeover during February, Indian Railways put into operation its largest route-relay interlocking, to control the junction at Old Delhi. Designed by Siemens using 11000 Series K-50 relays, it controls 1122 routes on 28 running lines, with 238 signals and 188 sets of points. The station currently handles ...