All articles by Railway Gazette International – Page 362
-
NewsDouala tram project poised to launch
CAMEROON: Construction work on a ‘pilot’ 18 km tram route in the rapidly expanding port city of Douala is expected to start during the first half of this year. This follows signature of an agreement announced on January 30 between the government and a consortium led by Iristone Consulting of ...
-
NewsIrish implementation plan focuses six-year rail spend
Substantial investment in heavy and light rail is envisaged under the National Transport Authority’s Draft Integrated Implementation Plan for 2019-24. Tony Miles investigates
-
NewsModi launches Vande Bharat Express and orders 130 more
INDIA: IR’s prototype Train 18 semi-high speed EMU was formally launched into revenue service by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a ceremony at New Delhi station on February 15. Now branded as Vande Bharat Express, the 16-car EMU was developed by the Integral Coach Factory to operate medium-distance inter-city routes ...
-
NewsRailway supply industry news round-up
Lenord + Bauer and STMicroelectronics are working to develop a demonstrator neuronal network for assessing bearing vibration data onboard a vehicle, reducing the amount of data which needs to be transmitted to a central monitoring system. Powerlines Group has opened a Belgian business with offices in Oostende, and its ...
-
NewsLaview EMUs are ready to roll
JAPAN: The first of seven Laview luxury EMUs which will operate Seibu Railway’s premier Limited Express services between Tokyo’s Ikebukuro station and Seibu-Chichibu from March 16 was formally presented at the operator’s Kotesashi depot on February 14. Intended as the railway’s flagship, the 1 067 mm gauge Series 001 trainsets ...
-
NewsSNCF to reshape TER operations
FRANCE: Radical changes to the operations management and customer relations activities for SNCF’s regional passenger services were announced by General Manager, TER, Frank Lacroix on February 14. Providing an update on the CAP TER 2020 transformation strategy launched at the end of 2016, Lacroix said the first two years had ...
-
NewsALFA-X nose is 22 m long
JAPAN: East Japan Railway has unveiled the second driving car for its experimental ALFA-X Shinkansen trainset, which features a 22 m long aerodynamic nose designed to mitigate the sonic boom effect of entering and passing through tunnels at very high speed. Built at Hitachi's Kasado plant, Car 10 has a ...
-
NewsCAF to replace New South Wales regional train fleet
AUSTRALIA: The New South Wales government signed a contract for 117 multiple-unit cars to replace its entire regional train fleet on February 14. The Momentum Trains consortium of CAF, Pacific Partnership and DIF Infrastructure V has been awarded an availability-based PPP contract to design, build, finance and maintain the ...
-
NewsBucurești airport rail link tendering underway
ROMANIA: Infrastructure manager CFR has called tenders for the design and construction of a 2·95 km rail connection to Terminal 1 at Henri Coandă International Airport, which would allow the operation of a direct rail service from the airport to București Nord station. The alignment would include a 1·5 km ...
-
News‘Battle plan’ to save France’s rural railways
FRANCE: A report into the condition, usage and prospects of almost 9 000 route-km of secondary railway is to be handed to government before the end of March. According to Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne, the report will form part of a ‘battle plan’ to save a broad swathe of the ...
-
NewsSantiago – Valparaíso proposal submitted
CHILE: Proposals to build a high-performance railway between the capital Santiago and the port of Valparaíso have been formally submitted to the Ministry of Public Works by the Tren Valparaíso Santiago consortium of local firm of Sigdo Koppers and China Railway Engineering Corp. According to the promoters, the US$2·5bn project ...
-
NewsMitsubishi to adds to the Ina Line’s ‘rainbow’ of trains
JAPAN: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engineering is to supply one more six-car Model 2020 Automated Guideway Transit rubber-tyred light metro trainset for use on Saitama New Urban Transit Co’s Ina Line in Greater Tokyo. MHI delivered three Model 2020 sets in 2015, with the first entering service in November that ...
-
NewsHigh speed line approved
CHINA: Construction of the 176 km Chengdu – Zigong Yulin Passenger-Dedicated Line has been approved, with a budget of 35·9bn yuan and opening planned for 2023. The Chengdu – Tianfu section will be built for 250 km/h operation, and the Tianfu – Zigong section for 350 km/h. There will be ...
-
NewsCalifornia high speed rail plan scaled back
USA: A scaling back of the high speed rail project in California was announced by Governor Gavin Newsom in his first State of the State address on February 12. Newsom said the project ‘as currently planned’ would ‘cost too much and take too long’, and added that there had been ...
-
NewsFirenze tram route T2 inaugurated
ITALY: Firenze tram Route T2 was inaugurated at noon on February 11, ahead of the entry into passenger service at 14.30. Travel on the route is free for two weeks. The opening ceremony was attended by President Sergio Mattarella, Minister of Transport & Infrastructure Danilo Toninelli, Mayor Dario Nardella, Toscana ...
-
NewsAqaba railway feasibility study agreed
JORDAN: The Saudi Jordanian Investment Fund and the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority have signed a memorandum of understanding to undertake feasibility and technical studies for the development of a 195 km railway connecting a planned inland dry port at Ma’an with port facilities around Aqaba. The existing 1 050 ...
-
NewsAmber Rail Freight Corridor becomes operational
EUROPE: The Amber Rail Freight Corridor has become operational, as the first new corridor to be established since the original nine defined in 2010. Prearranged trains paths are now available for the 2019-20 timetable year through the corridor’s ‘one stop shop’. Designated as RFC 11, the Amber RFC is ...
-
NewsTatra-Yug delivers tram to Alexandria
EGYPT: The first of 15 high-floor trams that Tatra-Yug is supplying to Alexandria Passenger Transportation Authority began test running on February 10, having arrived in Alexandria four days earlier. The tram is expected to enter revenue service on the 32 route-km standard gauge network in late February. It is ...
-
NewsChaoma inter-city railway agreed
CHINA: An agreement for the construction of the Chaoma inter-city railway was signed by municipal authorities in Hefei and Ma'anshan and the Anhui Province Investment Group on January 27. The 76 km line will start at Chaohu Dong station in Hefei city, pass though Hanshan county and Zhengpugang Xinqu in ...
-
NewsPhase change material cooled container developed
CONTAINER: The University of Birmingham and CRRC Shijiazhuang have developed a container that uses phase change material in place of traditional refrigeration technology. The material changes between liquid and solid depending on the temperature, with the phase change absorbing or releasing energy to maintain the interior of the container ...