Passenger rail news – Page 96
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NewsPassenger services revived on freight line
GERMANY: Passenger services were reintroduced on the 28 km Bad Bentheim – Neuenhaus route in Niedersachsen on July 6, following a €21m project to upgrade Bentheimer Eisenbahn’s previously freight-only line. Discounted preview fares were offered on the first day, with the full revenue service beginning on July 7. The line’s ...
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NewsSouth Coast Rail groundbreaking ceremony
USA: A groundbreaking ceremony at East Freetown in Massachusetts on July 2 officially marked the start of work on Phase 1 of the South Coast Rail commuter project. The $1·047bn project will extend Boston’s Middleborough Line commuter rail services to Taunton, New Bedford and Fall River, the only major cities ...
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NewsThailand launches Cambodian border service
THAILAND: State Railway of Thailand launched a twice-daily passenger service between Bangkok and the Cambodian border on July 1. The service is aimed at Thai and foreign tourists and people visiting the Rong Kleua Market. The service is expected to promote cross-border trade with Cambodia, with significant growth in ridership ...
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NewsSachsen line reopenings under consideration
GERMANY: Local transport authority VMS is studying options for reviving passenger services to Rochlitz and on the Pockau-Lengefeld – Marienberg line in Sachsen. Servies to Rochlitz ended in 2000, with passengers instead needing to travel by bus to Geithain for connections to Leipzig and Chemnitz. VMS is studying options and ...
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NewsCoach kits delivered to Kazakhstan
KAZAKHSTAN: Transmashholding’s Tver Carriage Works is supplying Tulpar-Talgo with kits for the assembly of Type 61-4447 coaches in Nur-Sultan. The Russian factory has supplied 137 complete coaches of various types to Kazakhstan over the past decade, and this is its first contract to supply kits for local assembly. The ...
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NewsCP and EMEF to merge ahead of market opening
PORTUGAL: The government has approved a €45m capital investment programme for both national operator CP and rolling stock maintenance business EMEF. To be funded from the state budget, the 2019-22 plan approved on June 27 has two parts. The first covers investment of €9m in 2019, primarily to enable EMEF ...
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NewsFinnish passenger tendering plan put on hold
FINLAND: Recently-appointed Minister of Transport & Communications Sanna Marin has suspended plans to call tenders for the operation of regional passenger services in southern Finland. On June 27 the ministry said that the preparatory process had shown that it would not be possible to proceed as planned. A fair and ...
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NewsCisalpino Pendolinos to work Athens – Thessaloniki line
GREECE: Following its acquisition of national passenger operator Trainose, Italy’s FS Group has decided to deploy its 200 km/h ETR470 tilting trains to accelerate inter-city services on the Athens – Thessaloniki main line. This follows trials with one of Trenitalia’s multi-system ETR485 trainsets last year. The first of five ...
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NewsBranch lines’ future secured as Elster-Geiseltal operating contract signed
GERMANY: A contract for the operation of Elster-Geiseltal local passenger services from December 15 2019 was signed by Sachsen-Anhalt transport authority NASA and DB Regio Südost in the chapter house of Merseburg Cathedral on July 1. The contract covers the operation of service RB78 on the 35 km Geiseltal branch ...
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NewsBattery answer to Schleswig-Holstein’s diesel replacement question
GERMANY: Schleswig-Holstein transport authority NAH.SH has formally awarded preferred bidder Stadler a contract to supply a fleet of battery-powered Flirt Akku multiple-units for use on regional services from 2022. The €600m deal includes a firm order for the supply of 55 trains and the provision of 30 years of maintenance. ...
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NewsAdelaide A-City fleet expansion
AUSTRALIA: The government of South Australia has awarded Bombardier Transportation a contract to supply a further 12 three-car A-City electric multiple-units to increase capacity on the Adelaide suburban network. The order announced on June 28 will take the A-City fleet to 34 units. The 1 600 mm gauge 25 kV ...
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NewsRENFE seeks to take on the TGV
FRANCE: On July 1, RENFE Operadora confirmed its intention to enter the French high speed passenger market, saying it had lodged the relevant applications with regulator Arafer, safety authority EPSF and infrastructure manager SNCF Réseau. The Spanish national operator would compete with incumbent SNCF on high speed routes initially using ...
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NewsChina out in front with the world’s fastest trains
INTERNATIONAL: China now has the fastest regular timetabled trains in the world, significantly faster than any other country, according to Railway Gazette’s biennial World Speed Survey, which appears in the July 2019 issue of Railway Gazette International magazine. Compiled by Jeremy Hartill of the Railway Performance Society, using data for ...
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Rail Business UKNew trains launch ‘genuine transformation’ of Northern services
UK: The first nine of 101 diesel and electric multiple-units being supplied to Northern by CAF entered passenger service on July 1. ‘Over the course of the rest of this year, the new trains will be introduced into towns and cities right across the north, marking a genuine transformation of ...
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NewsSwitzerland: Competitive stress
SWITZERLAND: Swiss Federal Railways CEO Andreas Meyer believes that SBB could be forced into a position where it became a residual operator if the federal government were to pursue further its policy of on-rail competition. In an interview with Neue Zürcher Zeitung on May 29, Meyer reiterated ...
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NewsBane NOR awards Moss realignment contract
NORWAY: Infrastructure manager Bane NOR has selected a consortium of Implenia Norge and Acciona Construcción to rebuild a key section of the busy Østfold Line through the town of Moss, at a cost of NKr6·3bn. Under a contract signed on June 28, the MossIAANS joint venture will build a 10·3 ...
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NewsSiemensstadt S-Bahn funding agreement
GERMANY: The long-disused S-Bahn branch to the Berlin suburb of Siemensstadt and Gartenfeld is set to be reactivated following the signing of an agreement between Deutsche Bahn's Board Member for Infrastructure Ronald Pofalla and the city's Mayor Michael Müller on July 28 to fund the necessary planning studies at an ...
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NewsPKP Intercity signs EMU modernisation contract
POLAND: PKP Intercity has signed a 274·8m złoty contract with a consortium of Pesa and its subsidiary ZNTK Mińsk Mazowiecki for the modernisation of 14 ED74 electric multiple-units. The modernisation will include the fitting of air-conditioning, wi-fi, mobile phone signal repeaters, a power socket at every seat and two ...
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NewsBayern awards two operating contracts
GERMANY: Bayern railway agency BEG awarded DB Regio two overlapping operating contracts on June 24. The first is an interim contract covering the operation of long-distance regional services on the 220 km route from München to Lindau via Memmingen for one year from December 2020, while the second covers the ...
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NewsEast Norway passenger operating contract plan announced
NORWAY: Railway agency Jernbanedirektoratet has announced its preferred option for tendering the operation of passenger services around Oslo and southeast Norway. This follows a study of eight options for grouping the routes which it undertook on behalf of the Ministry of Transport & Communications. The two operating contracts would be ...