All News articles – Page 240
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News
Sidetrack
Newfoundland tunnelNEWFOUNDLAND & Labrador Premier Danny Williams has announced a C$352000 study into the feasibility of a rail tunnel linking the island and the Canadian mainland.Replacing a seasonal ferry service, electric shuttle trains would carry road vehicles through the immersed tube tunnel across the Strait of Belle Isle between Green ...
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Renfe restructures
IN PREPARATION for the separation of operating and infrastructure functions under legislation passed last year (RG 12.03 p756), the Spanish National Railways board approved on January 27 the restructuring of its freight activities.The Freight and Intermodal business units are being merged into a single Freight unit that will form part ...
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Projects relaunched
TURKEY’S Ministry of Transport has drawn up a revised strategy designed to ensure that many long-planned but stalled rail projects can move off the drawing board. No less than 13 schemes could benefit from this initiative which would see around US$15bn invested by 2020.The projects include the 260 km line ...
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Pointers
Congolese Minister for Planning Pierre Moussa expects to sign contracts shortly for the privatisation of the 509 km Congo-Ocean Railway between Brazzaville and Pointe Noir. Shortlisted consortia NLPI-Spoornet, Sheltam-Mvela, Rites and Comazar-SNCF International were due to present their final technical bids in January.Look for Mozambique national railway CFM to announce ...
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Schedule planning
AMTRAK has begun using TrainPlan software from Vossloh IT to identify scheduling conflicts during its timetable development process. TrainPlan allows Amtrak to use a single national database for all train schedules, helping to ensure data integrity and removing the risks of errors being introduced if information is transferred between databases. ...
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PEOPLE
Ivor J Evans has been elected Vice-Chairman of Union Pacific Railroad, and James R Young has been elected to succeed him as President of Union Pacific Corp. They will join Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Dick Davidson in a newly-created Office of the Chairman. Robert M Knight Jr is to ...
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Metros
Czech Republic:Skoda DT Plzen is to supply 20 Astra asynchronous low-floor trams worth KC1·3bn to Praha in 2005, for use on the Hlubocepy - Barrandov extension (RG 1.04 p14). There are options for a further 40 vehicles worth up to KC3bn.Denmark:København Metro’s Flintholm station opened on January 24, providing an ...
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Melbourne signs ’stability’ pact
VICTORIA state Premier Steve Bracks announced on February 19 that the government had signed five-year ’partnership agreements’ with Yarra Trams and Connex for the operation of tram and suburban train services in Melbourne, which he believed would deliver ’stability and improved services to customers’.The deal is intended to resolve a ...
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Market
Australia:The A$550m Victoria Regional Fast Rail project has selected Thales Communications’ Train Protection & Warning System equipment for installation on 500 km of new and upgraded track radiating from Melbourne by 2005.A Leighton-Kumagai consortium signed the A$324·5m design and build contract for the city section of the A$1·5bn New MetroRail ...
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Keep the politicians out
MAARTEN VAN EEGHEN, Director General in the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works & Water Management, warned senior executives attending the EuroRail conference at the end of January in Amsterdam to keep politics - and politicians - out of the business.In a forthright keynote presentation describing recent events and current ...
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Rebuilding Iraq's ravaged railways
Bechtel is co-ordinating reconstruction on Iraqi Republic Railways, which conflict and lack of maintenance have left in a poor condition. Following a rapid assessment of the infrastructure, work has begun on a major upgrade of the route from Um Qasr to Shouaiba Junction
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News
INTELLIGENCE
Austria: Voestalpine’s logistics and transport subsidiary LogServ is to increase the amount of business it handles by rail as an open access operator. It has six locomotives and around 400 wagons available which will increasingly be used for cross-border traffic.A Salzburg court has acquitted 16 people charged in connection with ...
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Instant interline pricing
CANADIAN National Railway and CSX Corp have jointly developed an electronic tool which offers their customers immediate pricing for wagonload shipments.Account managers can use A+B Pricing to combine costs from CSX and CN to obtain a quote for interline traffic between any locations on their networks. The railways expect to ...
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INSIDE INDUSTRY
Siemens closes Carson factorySIEMENS Transportation Systems ceased production at its Carson, California, light rail vehicle bodyshell plant on January 15, after completing work on 17 SD600 low-floor cars for Portland’s TriMet. The plant equipment was auctioned on January 21, and the leased site returned to the owners. The Carson factory ...
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Minatomirai line inaugurated
FEBRUARY 1 saw the start of revenue services on the 4·1 km Minatomirai metro line in Yokohama, following a ceremony on January 29. Linking Yokohama station to Motomachi-Chukagai, the line has four intermediate stations. It is worked by a new fleet of Y500 series eight-car EMUs.Through services are operated in ...
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High speed southeast
ON JANUARY 30 the Spanish cabinet gave its approval for tenders to be called for civil works on nine sections of high speed line connecting Madrid with Valencia and Albacete. They cover a total of 125·5 km and are expected to cost €350·3m in all. Six consecutive sections run for ...
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Tram West is go
CONSTRUCTION of a 7·4 km western extension to the Bern tram network is expected to begin shortly, following the award of a concession for the project by the Swiss government in mid-January. Städtichen Verkehrsbetriebe Bern expects to complete Tram West by 2007. The line will start from a junction with ...
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Galaxie Project opens up France to new operators
Eurotunnel has succeeded where others failed. On February 13, the French government issued its first open access freight operator’s licence to Europorte 2, a Eurotunnel subsidiary. This was an indication that the French government is prepared to back Galaxie Project, details of which were revealed on February 9 when Eurotunnel ...
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Slide-in fixing
BOMBARDIER is using telescopic ball bearing slides in the refurbishment of 270 Mk IV inter-city coaches operated by Great North Eastern Railway (RG 11.03 p698).The vehicles’ pneumatic door control units were originally located in a box within the toilet compartment, which made them difficult to access for maintenance or repair. ...
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Fire prevention
WHILE overnight trains in some parts of Europe are being withdrawn or cut back, our correspondent in Germany reports that overnight travel there is undergoing something of a revival. This is remarkable given the onslaught of low-cost airlines and the widespread use of high speed trains on daytime journeys.Passengers on ...