All News articles – Page 343
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News
IR spends more
ON APRIL 5 Israel Railways put into service new buildings at Nahariya station, which is being rebuilt at a cost of US$1m. Traffic here rose by 50% last year, to 100000 passengers a month. Completion of a second platform next year will allow the launch of a half-hourly service, with ...
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intelligence
Brazil: Work is to start in June on the first phase of the Transnordestina project, between Sobradihno and Salgueiro. The scheme has been allocated R$240m by the federal government and the state of Pernambuco. The World Bank is providing R$100m, with the rest of the R$571m funding package provided by ...
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Inchon signalled to handle growth
INTRO: Line 1 of Inchon Rapid Transit Corp’s network carried over 57million passengers in its first year of service. Use of some of the most up-to-date signalling equipment with ATP and ATO allows 2min headways and contributes to high levels of reliabilityBYLINE: Jung-Ho Lee and Ernst Ploog*SERVING a major port ...
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Vasona groundbreaking
SANTA CLARA Valley Transportation Authority held ceremonies at San Jose station on March 29 to mark the start of construction of its Vasona light rail line. The $236m first phase diverges from the Guadalupe line and runs 8·5 km to Winchester with nine stops. The line is expected to generate ...
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Finance
France: The European Investment Bank has granted RFF a 300m euro loan towards the construction of the first phase of TGV-Est between Vaires-sur-Marnes and Baudrécourt.India: Indian Railway Finance Corp is planning to raise Rs30bn to part finance the Railways’ 2001-02 Annual Plan through private placement of taxable bonds, lease financing ...
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OverNight Express marries passengers with freight
INTRO: An innovative international service has been operating between Amsterdam and Milano for almost a year, and further routes are under discussion. Richard Hope finds that Netherlands Railways sees considerable potential for expansionCOMBINING time-sensitive freight with overnight sleeper trains has proved to be a commercially successful formula between Amsterdam and ...
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NewsIndustry's role in ERTMS
EUROPE: Unisig, a voluntary grouping of Siemens, Alstom, Adtranz, Invensys, Ansaldo and Alcatel, defined a minimum set of functions for ETCS/ERTMS that was approved on April 25 2000 by the European Commission, the International Union of Railways and the Union of European Railway Industries (Unife). This has become known as ...
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Delhi digs deeper
CONSTRUCTION of the north-south underground metro line in Delhi is expected to get under way shortly, following the award of a Rs16·5bn turnkey design-and-build contract on March 20. Delhi Metro Rail Corp has selected a consortium including local firms Larsen & Toubro and Ircon, Dyckerhoff & Widmann of Germany, Samsung ...
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Uzbek cut-off
LAST MONTH was due to see the launch of regular freight services between Toshkent and northwestern Uzbekistan via Uchkuduk, following the inauguration of a new cut-off to avoid a section of former Soviet main line which now runs through Turkmenistan.Ceremonies were held in February to mark the completion of the ...
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Corridor management
GERMAN Railway announced on April 9 that its infrastructure business DB Netz AG was to restructure its activities on a corridor basis. The 37500 route-km network will be divided into 22 route corridors, in order to co-ordinate planning and maintenance work more efficiently. Over the next three years, DB Netz ...
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Tunnel contracts
THIS MONTH will see the start of work on two major tunnels on the Belgian high-speed network. Construction contracts were approved by the SNCB board at the beginning of April, following recommendations by the high-speed line project management subsidiary TUC Rail SA. Described as the biggest single civil engineering project ...
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Container special
NEW Zealand port authority Ports of Auckland has signed a 15-year agreement with Tranz Rail to operate a dedicated container train on the North Island Main Trunk. The train will handle import and export traffic to and from a new container terminal at Palmerston North, serving the south of the ...
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Rails to conquer the Tibetan plateau
INTRO: Construction of a railway to Lhasa was started in 1958, but halted in the early 1980s until technical challenges could be overcome. Two decades later, Chinese Railways is poised to start work on an 1100 km railway through some of the world’s toughest terrainBYLINE: Wang Teh Lei and Xu ...
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Siberian saga draws to a close
BACK IN the USSR in 1981, construction workers toiling to build the 15·3 km Severomuisky tunnel on the Baikal-Amur Magistral encountered fast-flowing underground rivers that rapidly halted work. As we said at the time, ’streams of hot and cold water mingled with sand to produce a treacherous quicksand that spelt ...
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Measuring tunnel clearances faster
BYLINE: Dipl-Ing Bernhard MetzgerPlasser Measuring SystemsAN ACCURATE knowledge of loading gauge clearances is critical if a rail operator is to be certain that loads can be carried safely. But over time the clearance along a line can change for several reasons. The track can move out of position, perhaps being ...
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Strikes force change of course
TWO WEEKS of industrial action by drivers at French National Railways appeared to be drawing to a close on April 12 as officials at the FGAAC and SUD-Rail unions advised their members to return to work. After making major concessions on April 5 which had satisfied the larger unions such ...
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Challenges and opportunities change the face of urban transport
MOBILITY IS about more than just getting from one place to another. Today it is considered part of our quality of life, and nowhere is this more apparent than in major cities and their suburbs. It is also here that public transport plays a particularly important role, with rail and ...
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Spain’s high-speed challenge
HIGH SPEED rail travel has long since ceased to be an adventure. For more than a decade trains have run routinely at 300 km/h in France, while Japan, Belgium and Spain joined the club during the 1990s. The new Roma - Napoli line in Italy, Britain’s Channel Tunnel Rail Link, ...
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EMA camera identifies rail defects
GAUGE corner cracking and other forms of rolling contact fatigue can be detected using a field gradient rail inspection camera developed by Newt International. The Lizard camera presents television-like pictures of flaws in the rail (or other engineering structures) and uses an odometer to record defect locations. It can see ...
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Concession call
THE GOVERNMENTS of Senegal and Mali have called bids for a concession to operate the Dakar - Bamako line. Expressions of interest were invited by the end of April, and ’pre-selection’ documentation will be available this month. The process is being managed by a bi-national steering committee with representatives from ...