All News articles – Page 441
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News
Midland Metro car arrives on home ground
ONE HOUR’S SUNSHINE on an otherwise bleak February 19 in the heart of Britain’s industrial Black Country marked the official roll-out of the first tram for Midland Metro’s light rail Line 1. Linking Birmingham Snow Hill with West Bromwich, Wednesbury, Bilston and Wolverhampton, the line is due to open in ...
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Focused approach keeps Renfe on target
INTRO: To beat their financial targets for 1997, the eight operating business units of Spanish National Railways placed key emphasis on sales, applied rigorous cost control and made maximum use of resourcesTHE EIGHT business units forming the Operations Directorate of Spanish National Railways were particularly successful in meeting the commercial ...
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Adtranz unveils modular range
ON MARCH 16 Adtranz launched a new business strategy based on seven ’Modular Product Platforms’: Innovia - peoplemovers; Incentro - light rail vehicles; Movia - metros; Itino - regional multiple-units; Crusaris - inter-city multiple-units; Octeon electric locos; and Blue Tiger diesel locos. While these will initially complement rather than replace ...
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Adtranz Portugal broadens the product base
Production of carshells and finished passenger vehicles in stainless steel is widely recognised as the speciality of the former Sorefame plant at Amadora on the western edge of Lisboa. Recent contracts obtained by what is now Adtranz Portugal point towards the development of a broader product base, with orders obtained ...
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EMD’s first 6000hp locos enter revenue service
INTRO: Union Pacific is putting into revenue service the first of a fleet of 6000hp SD90MAC locomotives designed and built by General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division. Trials at the AAR test centre in Pueblo showed that a single loco fitted with EMD’s novel four-stroke H-engine could handle an 11400 tonne train ...
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EIB to fund Line 4
THE HUNGARIAN government has reached agreement with Budapest City Council over guarantees for investment in the capital’s fourth metro line. Under a deal with the city council last year, the government will raise 60% of the Ecu514m cost of the 7·3 km line, and the city the rest (RG 10.97 ...
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Tramway upgrade
POLISH tramway operator PKT of Katowice has awarded a US$53·4m contract to GEC Alsthom and its local subsidiary Konstal for modernisation and re-equipment of its principal route from the city to Bytom (RG 2.98 p122). The project is expected to halve journey times on routes 6 and 41 and boost ...
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Subte transfer
ARGENTINIAN President Carlos Menem has instructed Transport Secretary Armando Carnosa to transfer responsibility for the 20-year Subte metro operating concession to the city government. Detailed negotiations began on January 13, and by January 19 the federal government was understood to have accepted the city’s main demand - that 380m pesos ...
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U-Bahn stock
STADTWERKE München has ordered 10 new U-Bahn trainsets for DM170m, to enter service at the end of 2000. The 115m long six-car trains will be fully open-plan inside with wide inter-car gangways for improved security and passenger flows. Consortium leader Siemens will supply the electrical equipment; mechanical parts will come ...
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Roscos under review
ON FEBRUARY 3 Britain’s Rail Regulator John Swift QC began to examine whether the rolling stock leasing companies, Angel Trains, Forward Trust Rail and Porterbrook, should be subject to tighter controls. Acting at the behest of Transport Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, Swift invited responses by March 2 ...
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Stop on Red
The Los Angeles metro - the Red line which celebrated its fifth birthday on January 30 - became a byword for delays, political interference and cost over-runs.On January 15, the board of the LA Metropolitan Transportation Authority accepted the recommendation of acting Chief Executive Officer Julian Burke that planning work ...
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Railtrack to the rescue
AS SOON as it became evident that LCR’s planned flotation in 1998 had little chance of success, discussions with Railtrack began last autumn in an effort to put a rescue package together. The original consortium members saw this as a way of preserving their interest in LCR.On February 12, Railtrack’s ...
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Railcars rejected
A RATHER different tale involves a contract for 16 diesel railcars for Finnish State Railways. The contract was won by GEC Alsthom Transporte of Spain, which duly shipped the first car to Helsinki for evaluation and tests. It turned out to be too heavy, although we are told that performance ...
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Punches pulled
Sir - In Rail Business Report 1998 in the article, ’Infrastructure Separation: What Have We Learned So Far?’, it seems to me that the authors have seriously understated the advantages of not separating the infrastructure but keeping it with operations under one management, as has traditionally been the practice of ...
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PUBLICATIONS
Optimisation of single horizontal railway curvesThis 92-page thesis summarises four reports. It demonstrates how passenger comfort on curve transitions can be optimised for tilting and non-tilting coaches. Forces and climbing ratios are simulated using models of the X2000 and a Eurofima standard coach, each with 46 degrees of freedom.Railway Technology, ...
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Procurement politics
WE SHOULD by now be seeing some evidence that European directives on public procurement are generating a positive effect, n’est-ce pas? Yet rolling stock procurement practice looks depressingly familiar. In Britain, nearly all orders in the last few months have gone to the local plants of GEC Alsthom and Adtranz, ...
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Points on a roll
THE Austroroll system for moving switch blades developed by Enzesfeld-Caro Metallwerke AG has been tested by main line, regional and metro operators throughout Europe, with recent trials conducted by Eurotunnel, Danish State Railways and Wiener Verkehrsbetriebe.Austroroll has been adopted as standard for Type B and C points by Austrian Federal ...
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Pointers
n The Railtrack board is due to consider a business case in the next few weeks for concentrating control of the British railway network into nine management centres, starting with an installation in Manchester to be built between 2001 and 2005.n Argentina’s interior ministry and the provinces of Chubut and ...
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PEOPLE
George Chen has been appointed Chairman of BC Transit.Mike Kinski has been named Chief Executive of Stagecoach Holdings, a post relinquished by Chairman Brian Souter, who will concentrate on business development.Joseph E Arsenault has been appointed Director, Systems Development, for Norfolk Southern. Carlos Roman of Spanish National Railways has been ...
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Tough restructuring starts to pay off
INTRO: Siemens Verkehrstechnik is mid-way through a programme of restructuring and divestments designed to return the business to profitability. Chris Jackson spoke to SVT President Dr Wolfram Martinsen in Sacramento last month ’THERE IS no shortcut or painless way to address the challenges we are facing ... the railway business ...