All articles by Railway Gazette International – Page 1128
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Barajas Express
SPAIN’S Ministry of Development published plans on March 18 for construction of a fast suburban link to Madrid Barajas airport that would allow airline passengers to reach the city centre in just 11min.The project requires additional tracks to be laid alongside the existing 4 km line from Chamartín to Hortaleza. ...
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Balfour Beatty rail profits rise
RAIL Engineering & Services at Balfour Beatty saw a 5% rise in operating profits to £43m in the year to December 31 2004, on turnover of £803m.The company’s UK projects, plant and track systems businesses ’performed well’, and Balfour Beatty said that the infrastructure maintenance contracts taken in-house by Network ...
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NYCT to start ATO
NEW YORK City Transit expected to introduce automatic train operation last month on its L Canarsie line, which has been re-equipped with communications-based train control by Siemens as a pilot for resignalling the subway network. The four-car trains formed of Kawasaki R143 stock have a train operator to supervise ...
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Arriva awarded Dutch contract
NOORDNED has been awarded a new 15-year contract to operate regional services in the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen from December 11. The agreement includes a commitment to introduce up to 50 new DMUs which will have level access from the platforms by September 2007. These will be fully ...
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Alstom to convert regional coaches
SNCF has awarded Alstom a €37m contract to refurbish 48 Corail B6Du regional coaches, with options worth about €18m for a further 30 vehicles.The coaches currently operate in loco-hauled rakes of four to eight cars, and will be converted into driving vehicles for push-pull operation. Crashworthiness improvements will permit an ...
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Dutch signalling accords signed
ONApril 20 Bombardier announced that it had reached an agreement with NedTrain Consulting for the development and distribution of ATB-EG Specific Transmission Modules and ATB-EGPhase 5 equipment, for which the first orders have already been placed.The STMs will interface between ETCS and the existing ATB automatic train protection equipment, enabling ...
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Freight accord
A CO-OPERATION agreement was signed at the Hannover Fair on April 11 by DB Chairman Hartmut Mehdorn and RZD President Gennady Fadeyev, paving the way for the setting up of a joint venture freight company by RZD and Railion.The accord builds on an earlier agreement announced in Berlin last September ...
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SNCF confirms pursuit of 350 km/h goal
INTRO: TGV services running at 350 km/h could one day link Paris and Bordeaux in just 2 hours, but more research is needed into braking, noise and maintenance costs FRENCH National Railways is intensifying its efforts to develop commercial services running at a maximum speed of 350 km/h. According to ...
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Bahn 2000 is working
EARLY REPORTS suggest that Switzerland’s ambitious Bahn 2000 programme with its nationwide interconnecting timetable has led to a 10% increase in passenger traffic on main line services. While this still awaits formal confirmation, it is clear that Swiss Federal Railways was already well placed to make progress even before the ...
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UP to invest $2bn
ON MARCH 30 Union Pacific announced that it expected to spend over US$2bn on capital investment during 2005.More than $1·3bn will be spent on infrastructure maintenance and upgrading, with 1700 km of rail to be replaced and another 12500 km resurfaced. UP expects to install 4·4 million new sleepers and ...
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10 000 km in next master plan
A FURTHER 10000 km of new railway is to be built in China, according to the first draft of Chinese Railways 2006-10 master plan which was unveiled by the Ministry of Railways on March 25. The plan would bring the total length of the CR network to more than 85000 ...
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Changing the perception of inter-city
THE FLEET of 120 inter-city diesel multiple-unit vehicles ordered in January represents a new departure for Iarnród Éireann, which currently uses loco-hauled vehicles on long-distance services. Funded by the government's National Development Plan, the €262m contract for the trains was signed with Japanese trading group Mitsui at a ceremony in ...
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Iran plans 50% network expansion as Mashhad - Bafgh line opens
Faced with growing demand for transit freight between the Central Asian republics and the Indian Ocean, RAI needs to modernise motive power and freight operations if it is to handle major flows of high-value traffic and containers. David Brice reports
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NewsCan Europe's railways win back their lost freight market share?
Globalisation and changing patterns of world trade mean that Europe's railways can expect zero growth in their traditional markets. They must accept a different role in the logistics chain and adapt to new markets and demands to survive Alain PoinssotConsultant, AXEP Consulting THE QUESTION posed in the title of this ...
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Television on the subway
MARTA has signed a 10-year contract with Atlanta-based company The Rail Network for the installation of five 15 inch flat digital television screens in each of the 338 Atlanta metro cars. Television news programmes will be updated four times daily, and there will be three music channels. An information channel ...
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Step-by-step training
ROYAL Navy training facilities are to be used in a £30m Advanced Apprenticeship Scheme launched by Network Rail.The company is to recruit 200 school leavers each year over five years for the three-year courses, which include a residential first year. The courses will be based at a purpose-built centre within ...
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Sidetrack
DieterNot the whole storyOUR Swiss cartoonist was fortunately not strolling across the Place Saint-Laurent in Lausanne on February 22, when tunnelling work for the city’s rubber-tyred M2 metro project brought about the collapse of a section of the square. Parts of the area had to be cordoned off, residents were ...
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No ride in Tainan
WE JUMPED to the wrong conclusion last month in our report on events in Taiwan on January 27. It appears that, although there were indeed around 500 guests at Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp’s ceremony in Tainan, they were not in fact allowed to ride on the Series 700T trainset. ...
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RandstadRail starts to take shape
Work is getting underway on a €1bn conversion of two heavy rail corridors serving Rotterdam and Den Haag into metro and light rail routes that will start operation next year. Harry Hondius MSc reports