All articles by Railway Gazette International – Page 1241
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News
TransRussia 2002 focuses on transit corridors
INTEREST in the potential of Russia’s Trans-Siberian rail landbridge is growing considerably, and the topic will be one of several up for debate at TransRussia 2002, the seventh International Transport & Logistics Conference being held on March 25-26 at Moscow’s Renaissance Hotel. Speakers at the plenary session will include newly-appointed ...
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Intelligence - March 2002
Afghanistan: Plans to build a 1815 km rail network, based on a scheme drawn up in the 1970s (RG 6.76 p204), were revived at January's International Conference on Reconstruction Assistance held in Tokyo. Australia: Freight Australia's request for the Commonwealth government to take control of access to Victoria's rail network ...
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First 20-year franchise
M40 Trains has secured the first 20-year franchise awarded by Britain’s Strategic Rail Authority. The new Chiltern Railways agreement was signed on February 18 and starts this month. M40 won the original seven-year Chiltern franchise in July 1996, but the SRA called bids for a longer replacement and chose M40 ...
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Bilbao to invest i1·5bn
AIMING to increase the number of passengers using public transport in Bilbao from 90million in 1999 to over 200million by 2025, the Basque regional government has unveiled an infrastructure investment programme totalling €1·5bn. Expansion of the metro, expected to carry over 134million passengers a year, has been allocated €115m; projects ...
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Second thoughts at Roissy
BACK in 1992 Aéroports de Paris rejected a Fr410m bid from Matra to build a rubber-tyred driverless VAL mini-metro to ferry passengers between terminals at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport. Instead ADP chose Soulé’s SK-6000 cable-powered peoplemover, but after a lengthy testing period decided this was not sufficiently reliable. It called a halt ...
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Shinkansen reservations
East Japan Railway planned to launch an English-language website on January 21. Located at www.world.eki-net.com it will allow overseas customers to reserve seats on all shinkansen and Narita Express airport services up to one month before travelling. A Japanese-language site has been in operation since April last year.Passengers need ...
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Publications
Nahverkehrs-Taschenbuch 2002A useful three-volume directory of the German public transport industry covering both passenger and freight. Details of operators, institutions and research centres are given in Volume I, consultants and suppliers are listed in Volume II, and Volume III is an alphabetical directory of key personnel in all sectors of ...
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Umtata upgrade proposed
SOUTH AFRICA’S Eastern Cape provincial transport department has called bids for the refurbishment of the 282 km railway to the former Transkei capital Umtata. The department’s Director for Policy & Projects Lan Situma expects to award a contract next month for a turnkey package, which would include infrastructure and signalling ...
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Pointers
n A delegation of Iraqi Transport Ministry officials was due to join Foreign Secretary Naji Sabri on a visit to Iran at the end of January to discuss proposals for construction of a Baghdad - Tehran rail link.n Swedish infrastructure authority Banverket announced on January 7 that the first Ikea ...
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PEOPLE
Netherlands Railways President & Director-General Hans Huisinga and Director of External Relations Roy Lantain resigned on January 2, together with the company’s entire Supervisory Board under Chairman Jan Timmer. Wim Meyer has been appointed Board Chairman, and Karel J Noordzij Acting President for six months (p59).Indonesian Railway Public Corp President ...
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NS spending trimmed
MORE MAINTENANCE and fewer major investment projects is the essence of Norfolk Southern’s capital improvement budget for 2002, announced by Chairman, President & CEO David R Goode on December 13. Planned spending totals $705m, compared with $806m in 2001.The programme provides $482m for infrastructure projects, including $366m for track and ...
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Metros
Bulgaria: Sofia Tramway is negotiating for an EBRD loan to fund the modernisation of up to 45 trams and purchase of 20 new vehicles.China: Guangzhou Metro Corp has selected Siemens’ optic fibre Open Transport Network for data transmission on Line 2, now under construction.A batch of new light rail cars ...
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Market
Brazil: Holland Company has supplied a customised TrackStar road-rail track recording vehicle to MRS Logistíca. It is fitted with EH Reeves’s Laserail geometry measuring equipment.Colombia: Steer Davies Gleave has been commissioned to carry out an audit of traffic and revenue forecasts for Atlantic Railway concession holder Fenoco SA.Denmark: Porterbrook Leasing ...
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More maglev vehicles in Yamanashi trials
ASSESSMENT of the results from running tests carried out on Japan’s 18·4 km experimental maglev guideway near Otsuki in Yamanashi prefecture since April 1997 has prompted a further series of trials using two more vehicles due to be delivered later this year.JR Central, which is promoting the development of superconducting ...
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Low-noise wheel
Unveiled at WCRR was the Syope noise-reducing wheel developed by Lucchini of Italy. Trials have taken place on Italian State Railways with ETR470 and ETR500 high speed trainsets, and the first application on a commercial train will be on the Pendolino units being built for Czech Railways.Sound is damped by ...
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Southwest links open
CHINESE Minister of Railways Fu Zhihuan joined ceremonies at Guiyang on December 30 to mark the completion of upgrading work on CR’s Zhuzhou - Liupanshui line. The 1139 km electrified line connecting the industrial heart of Hunan province with the southwestern coalfields of Guizhou province has been double-tracked at a ...
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Portable ticket issuing
BRITISH inter-city operator Midland Main Line is to begin using SchlumbergerSema’s Avantix Mobile ticket-issuing machine this month. Based on a Pocket PC, 1500 Avantix Mobile units will replace existing portable machines on National Express Group’s nine franchises.Avantix Mobile can print magnetic stripe tickets for use with automatic barrier gates, and ...
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IR studies network wiring
ISRAEL RAILWAYS has called tenders for a preliminary design study into the electrification of its entire network, totalling 700 route-km. Previous proposals had only envisaged wiring the 320 route-km passenger network radiating from Tel Aviv, but the new plan would include the heavy-haul freight routes in the south of the ...
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INTELLIGENCE
Australia: Victoria state government has decided not to build a rail link to Melbourne airport in the next 10 years, following the prediction of low patronage in a report by Booz·Allen & Hamilton. However, the proposed alignment is to be reserved for future rail use.South Australia began negotiations last month ...
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PATHstudies integrated ticketing
PORT Authority Trans-Hudson commissioners voted on December 13 to adopt a fare collection system which will accept both smart cards and New York City Transit MetroCards. It is hoped the PATH smart cards will eventually be accepted on all rail and bus lines throughout the New York and New Jersey ...