Croatia: National Railway Equipment Corp has awarded TZV Gredelj a US$12·5m contract to repair and modernise six diesel-electric locos by June 2008. The contract will be followed by another for a further six.
Europe: On September 24 Angel Trains ordered another 60 Traxx electric locos from Bombardier for €225m. Bringing the Angel fleet to 70 locos for 15 kV 16·7 Hz operation, 74 multi-system locos and 20 for 3 kV DC, the order includes options which are expected to be exercised shortly.
Last month Thalys began testing on-train wi-fi being provided by Nokia Siemens Networks, 21Net and Telenet under a supply, install and maintain contract. Branded as ThalysNet, the system may be made available to passengers in 2008.
On September 19 Bombardier announced a €40m order to supply Allco Finance Group with 12 Traxx F140 AC electric locos for use in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. The Australian financing specialist is establishing a European rail leasing business based in London, and will take delivery of the locos by December 2008.
France: Under a US$30m framework contract with Bombardier, ABB is to supply pairs of traction transformers for the 172 Spacium 3.06 EMUs ordered by SNCF for Ile-de-France services (RG 9.07 p574).
Germany: The BeNEX subsidiary of Hamburger Hochbahn and Babcock & Brown Public Partnerships has placed a €16m order with Siemens for six Desiro Classic DMUs. They will be used by ODEG when it takes over Spree-Neiße regional services from Veolia and DB in 2008.
Railion has begun taking delivery of 1600 Type 560 double-deck wagons for transporting cars.
Italy: On September 18 Mer Mec announced it had acquired South Carolina based ImageMap Inc. The Italian firm has also bought French infrastructure monitoring firm Inno-Tech, and formed a technical and marketing partnership with Tecnogamma.
Lithuania: LG has taken delivery of the first of 34 six-axle Eurorunner ER20 CF diesel-electric freight locos to be supplied by Siemens by mid-2009 under a €120m contract signed in 2005.
Netherlands: Infraspeed Maintenance has ordered two 120 km/h multi-purpose rail vehicles from Windhoff for use on HSL-Zuid. The 21 m vehicles can accommodate cranes and interchangeable work modules.
A consortium of Welling, Züblin and Donges has been selected to build a new bridge over the IJssel at Zwolle, to carry the Amersfoort — Zwolle route and the new Hanze line. To open in 2010, the design by architects Quist Wintemans uses concrete to reduce noise compared with the existing steel structure.
Poland: Last month ZNLE Gliwice was awarded a contract to modernise four PKP Cargo ET22 electric locos, with 49 more expected to follow. PKP Cargo is planning to upgrade around half its fleet of 900 of the 3 kV freight locos to the standards of the ET22-2000 prototype rebuilt in 2004.
Russia: Last month RZD signed contracts with Transmash Holding for the supply of 109 E5K AC electric freight locos from Novocherkassk and 103 EP2K 3 kV DC passenger locos from Kolomensky Zavod.
Vagonmash has delivered 22 coaches and 16 dining cars to RZD's Severo-Kavkazskaya and Gorkovskaya railway administrations under contracts totalling 879m roubles.
On September 19 RZD and Uralvagonzavod signed a three-year contract worth 68bn roubles for the supply of 40 000 wagons.
Spain: ADIF has awarded Thales a four-year contract worth €57·5m to maintain signalling on the LZB-equipped Madrid — Sevilla high speed line and the branch to Toledo where ETCS has been installed. It covers a control centre at Atocha as well as 13 electronic interlockings and 3 500 items of lineside equipment.
Renfe has awarded Siemens-IER a €3·3m contract to supply 210 touch-screen ticket vending machines which will be installed at 13 major stations.
Sweden: LKAB has awarded Funkwerk IT a contract to supply AlisterCargo electronic interlockings and a control centre for the Sjöbangarden yard in Kiruna. Work is to begin shortly for completion in 2008.
Ukraine: Lugansk Works has been awarded contracts to modernise 42 diesel locos for Yakutia Railways by 2010, and to upgrade eight locos for Mongolia in 2008.
UK: Network Rail has revised its track renewals contracts from six to four, aligning switch and crossing renewal with plain-line work to give efficiency savings expected at 23% over five years. The four contractors are a joint venture of Amey and SECO, Balfour Beatty, First Engineering and Jarvis. The framework contracts are valued at around £90m per company per year.
Southeastern ordered a simulator from Corys TESS which will be commissioned at Ashford in September 2008 to train crews for the Hitachi Class 395 EMUs due to enter service in December 2009 (p600).
USA: Harsco has received two orders worth a total of $12m for the supply of a 16-stone rail grinder to Singapore Land Transport Authority and two 10-stone grinders to a customer in Japan.
