All News articles – Page 333
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News
People
Sango Ntsaluba has been appointed Executive Director of Spoornet. Pat Malaza has become Executive Manager, Financial Management. Roy Allen has been elected Chairman of the International Heavy Haul Association, with Ronaldo Costa as Vice Chairman. Edith E Holiday has been appointed to Canadian National's Board of Directors. Vernon Murphy has ...
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SNCF orders
FRENCH National Railways has ordered a further 180 Prima electric freight locos from Alstom, with an option for another 120. As with the existing order for 120, the locos will be split between dual-system Class 427000 (25 kV 50Hz/1·5 kV DC) and three-system variants: Class 437000 with 15 kV 162/3 ...
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Market
Australia: Victoria’s Department of Infrastructure has called tenders for consultants to study likely patronage of a rail link to Melbourne Tullamarine airport, using either the Broadmeadows or Albion suburban lines.Australia Southern has awarded contracts worth A$6m to EDI Rail for refurbishment of eight locos and 26 fixed pairs of rail-carrying ...
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Link revived
THROUGH PASSENGER services between Kolkata and Dhaka are set to resume by the end of this year, following a trial run from Tangail to Kolkata and back on July 11-12. The Joint Secretary at the Bangladesh Communications Ministry M Ataur Rahman signed an agreement with Indian High Commissioner M L ...
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Kazakhs open northeast link
JUNE 19 saw the opening to traffic of the first new railway to be completed in Kazakhstan since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The 184 km Aksu - Konechnaya line connects the existing branches from Pavlodar to Ermak and Semipalatinsk to Degelen, providing a direct link ...
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Industry News
Netherlands: From mid-2002 NedTrain is to invest 17m guilders renewing equipment at its Haarlem workshops.More industry news on p543
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Trio of orders launches next phase of high speed programme
INTRO: Spanish National Railways has selected three different types of high speed train for the Madrid - Barcelona line where speeds will reach 350 km/hWITHIN THE last six months Spanish National Railways has selected preferred bidders for three contracts for high speed trains, and more are in the pipeline. Most ...
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Red Revolution launches high speed tilt tests
INTRO: On July 9 Virgin Trains staged a high speed publicityrun with its first Pendolino Britannico tilting trainset at the Alstom test track. Murray Hughes reports RED WAS the colour of the day on July 9, when Virgin Trains and Alstom demonstrated 200 km/h running with a pre-series Class 390 ...
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Wires go west
FRENCH infrastructure authority RFF is to electrify the 114 km from Nantes to La-Roche-sur-Yon and the resort of Les-Sables-d’Olonne by 2007. An agreement for the Fr537m project was signed with the government, the region of Pays de la Loire and the departments of Vendée and Loire-Atlantique on July 10.At present ...
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No let-up in German spending plans
ONE OF German Railway’s ICE fleet reached a speed of 393 km/h during trials of a Japanese-designed bogie on the Hannover - Berlin high speed line on July 13. The test was part of DB’s programme to develop trains fit for commercial service at 350 km/h - for the moment ...
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More productivity gains in prospect
SINGLE COMMODITY railways have several advantages over mixed traffic railways when it comes to productivity comparisons. All trains, for example, may be of the same formation and same weight, allowing the best use of line capacity. Nonetheless, it is instructive to see just what is being achieved by the iron ...
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Learning to live in a free market
INTRO: In the 10 years after Romania’s December 1989 revolution, the volume of rail traffic slumped to just 35% of its former level. Following the restructuring of SNCFR into five independent companies in October 1998, the slide has been halted, and international loans are funding much-needed modernisation. Chris Jackson asked ...
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Low-floor fleet
ON JUNE 27 Istanbul Ulasim AS awarded a €86m contract to Bombardier Transportation for supply of 55 low-floor cars, to be delivered from September 2002. Derived from the K
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Finance
Estonia: In June parliament voted to increase passenger operator Edelaraudtee’s funding to 148m kroons this year, 159m kroons in 2002 and 140m in 2003. State subsidies will cease in 2004.Great Britain: Porterbrook Leasing is to finance 845 coal hopper wagons for EWS. They will be built at York by Thrall ...
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Kiley sacked in PPP fiasco
ON JULY 17 Britain’s Secretary of State for Transport Stephen Byers dismissed Bob Kiley as Chairman of London Regional Transport, parent company of London Underground. In his place Byers reappointed Sir Malcolm Bates, who had held the post until Kiley was named as his successor on May 10 by Deputy ...
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Ghan extension
WITH construction of the Alice Springs - Darwin line scheduled to start in July, Great Southern Railway has formulated plans to extend The Ghan cruise train beyond Alice Springs. GSR Chief Executive Officer Stephen Bradford said that The Ghan would run weekly to Darwin between December and February and twice ...
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Mail & Express
Sir - I was interested to read the letter from Christophe Boisseau about mixed passenger and freight traffic (RG 6.01 p382). However, I expected a more detailed exposition of Amtrak’s experience with non-passenger operations. Amtrak has been handling small, time-sensitive freight on much of its passenger network for several years, ...
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In seat entertainment
AEROVISION Avionics is supplying in-seat entertainment equipment for Queensland Rail’s Cairns Tilt Train (p523). Originally developed for airline use, it offers six video and six audio channels, with sound delivered through headphones.When not in use, the TFT screens are stored in the seat armrests. The system is controlled via a ...
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Refurbished stock heads east
ITALIAN RAILWAYS’ rolling stock maintenance arm UTMR - now a Trenitalia subsidiary - is offering a range of refurbished coaches to railways in eastern Europe. The basis for the conversions are UIC-standard Type X vehicles dating from the early 1970s which have been replaced on Italian domestic inter-city services by ...