News – Page 422
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NewsAfrica’s first high speed line inaugurated
MOROCCO: The first high speed railway in Africa was inaugurated by King Mohammed VI and French President Emmanuel Macron with a ceremony in Tanger on November 15. Revenue services are expected to begin before the end of the year. During the event the king officially named the high speed line ...
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NewsRailway supply industry news round-up
Representatives of Kamkor Locomotive, GE Transportation and Škoda Transportationmet last month to discuss co-operation to maintain Kazakhstan Railways TEP33A passenger locomotive wheelsets at the Shar locomotive depot. Germany’s Federal Railway Authority has certified Deutsche Bahn’s inspection and infrastructure engineering contractor DB Systemtechnik as an independent assessment body for ...
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NewsMEPs vote to increase rail passengers’ rights
EUROPE: Members of the European Parliament voted in favour of proposed changes to increase rail passengers’ rights at a plenary session on November 15. MEPs voted 533 in favour of the proposed changes and 37 against with 47 abstentions. Once the European Council has adopted its position, trilogue negotiations will ...
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NewsEU funds Plovdiv – Burgas modernisation
BULGARIA: The European Union is providing more than €293m from the Cohesion Fund to support modernisation of the 293 km line from Plovdiv to the Black Sea port of Burgas. The route forms part of the Orient/East Med TEN-T corridor connecting central and southeastern Europe. The scope includes raising lines ...
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NewsPrivate funding needed under C$6bn VIA Rail investment plan
CANADA: National passenger operator VIA Rail says that private-sector backing will be needed to support an investment programme worth more than C$6bn over the next decade. Chief Executive Yves Desjardins-Siciliano told the Terrapinn World Rail Festival conference in Amsterdam on November 13 that VIA Rail’s most pressing priority is to ...
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NewsAfghan railway terminal expansion MoU signed
AFGHANISTAN: A memorandum of understanding for the development of the freight terminal at Aqina on the Afghan-Turkmenistan border, including the construction of 10 track-km of main line and sidings, was signed by the Afghanistan Railway Authority and Turkmenistan’s Ministry of Railways in Ashgabat on November 2. The MoU has six ...
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Rail Business UKUK railway news round-up
Conservative MP for Harrogate & Knaresborough Andrew Jones was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Transport on November 12, following Jo Johnson’s resignation from the government on November 9. Jones was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport in 2015-17, and Exchequer Secretary to HM Treasury ...
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NewsAlstom announces 'excellent' first half results
ALSTOM: Chairman & CEO Henri Poupart-Lafarge said Alstom ‘achieved excellent results in this first half with breakthrough commercial successes’, when he presented on November 14 the company’s results for the financial period from April 1 to September 30. Alstom had booked orders worth €7·13bn, up from €3·17bn in the same ...
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NewsMultiple-units ordered under Chile’s rail modernisation strategy
CHILE: National operator EFE has awarded Chinese company CRRC Sifang a US$77m contract to supply 13 multiple-units for use on the Biotren, Corto Laja and Victoria – Temuco services operated by its Fesur subsidiary. The order covers a total of 10 three-car EMUs for the 65 km Biotren suburban network ...
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Metro Report InternationalSantiago metro extension electrification contract awarded
CHILE: Metro de Santiago has awarded Colas Rail a €20m contract for the electrification of a southern extension of Santiago metro Line 2. The scope of work covers the 5·1 km underground extension and enlarged depot. The work is to take three years and Colas will provide five years ...
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NewsElectric minibus presented in Barcelona
SPAIN: Barcelona transport operator TMB presented a prototype electric minibus at the Smart Mobility Congress on November 13. The vehicle has been developed as part of the RIS3CAT research project managed by Catalan competitiveness agency ACCIÓ, which is part of the region’s Ministry of Business & Knowledge. The EU’s ...
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NewsEBRD backs Ukrainian Railways wagon tender
UKRAINE: The European Bank for Reconstruction & Development is to provide Ukrainian Railways with a US$150m senior loan to finance the acquisition of up to 6 500 open wagons through an international tender. The provision of financing is to be combined with corporate reforms at UZ and its subsidiaries. This ...
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NewsWegh Group invests in Mozambique sleeper plant
MOZAMBIQUE: Italian company Wegh Group has increased its stake in concrete sleeper manufacturer Travessas Do Norte, which was already 52% owned by Wegh Mocambique. The company’s plant at Namialo on the Nacala – Nampula railway is one of the largest in southern Africa with a capacity of 1 600 sleepers ...
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NewsSNCF to sell Ouibus to BlaBlaCar in multimodal partnership
FRANCE: SNCF is to sell its loss-making Ouibus long-distance coach operations to the digital ride-sharing specialist BlaBlaCar under a multimodal development partnership announced on November 12. After a decade of head-to-head competition, the national railway has entered exclusive negotiations with the ‘leading French start-up in the mobility sector’. While the ...
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NewsBYD to supply electric buses to København
DENMARK: Bus operator Anchersen has ordered 27 electric buses from BYD to operate in København. The 12 m long buses will be charged overnight. They are due to enter passenger service at the end of 2019 on the north-south route between Emdrup Torv and Lergravsparken.
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NewsSHERPA project tackles terrorist threat to railways
EUROPE: The Shared & coHerent European Railway Protection Approach project to address risks associated with terrorist threats to trains and stations was launched in Paris on November 13. The 24-month SHERPA project is being funded by a grant from the European Union’s Internal Security Fund Police and co-ordinated by ...
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News
Concerns raised over passenger rights changes
EUROPE: The European Passengers’ Federation and the ALLRAIL association of new market entrants have called for mandatory protection for passengers making multi-leg journeys using separate tickets to be included in the recast of EU regulation COM(2017)0548 covering rail passengers’ rights. This would mean that if a connection were missed as ...
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NewsDigital freight train pioneers automated brake tests
FRANCE: In a presentation at the Alpine Rail Optimisation conference in Wien on November 8 Director of Wagon Management at SNCF Fret Nicolas Czernecki confirmed that the operator had become the first railway in Europe to implement automated brake testing on commercial freight trains. Under a pilot programme for ...
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NewsFrequentis to support Polish GSM-R deployment
POLAND: Infrastructure manager PKP PLK has selected Frequentis to provide dispatcher terminals and communication nodes as part of the national roll-out of GSM-R. The prime contractor for the GSM-R project is Nokia, which is providing a common IT platform for all the core software under a five-year turnkey contract awarded ...
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NewsDubai takes delivery of first Route 2020 metro train
UAE: Dubai Roads & Transport Authority has taken delivery of the first of 50 driverless Metropolis trainsets that Alstom is supplying for the Route 2020 extension. The five-car train was shipped from the German port of Bremerhaven after being assembled at Alstom’s Katowice factory in Poland. It ...