A milestone in the preparations for the opening of the core section of the Crossrail east-west link across London was reached on the night of February 25-26, when a Bombardier class 345 Aventra EMU ran under its own power for the first time through the tunnel beneath the River Thames. The train began its journey
DYNAMIC testing of the first Alstom Prima T8 double-unit electric locomotive for Indian Railways (IR) has begun at the Electric Locomotive Factory at Madhepura in the Indian state of Bihar. Alstom was awarded a Rs 230bn ($US 3.54bn) contract in November 2015 to supply 800 1676mm-gauge Prima T8s, which are classified WAG-12 by Indian Railways. The contract
INDIA: Three new footbridges intended to reduce congestion at key stations on the Mumbai suburban network were formally commissioned on February 27, at a ceremony attended by Minister of Railways Piyush Goyal and the Chief Minister of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis. The bridges at Elphinstone Road, Currey Road and Ambivili have been erected ‘as a matter
GREATER Vancouver Transportation Authority (Translink) announced on February 22 that it is bringing forward the acquisition of new trains for the SkyTrain automated metro network with the acquisition of 28 Hyundai Rotem cars for the Expo and Millennium lines. TransLink says the order will enable it to increase peak capacity and frequencies as passenger numbers continue to
MYANMAR: A consortium of Japanese companies Marubeni and IHI Corp’s Niigata Transys has signed a ¥7bn agreement to supply 24 diesel-electric multiple-unit cars to Myanma Railways. Consortium leader Marubeni will be in charge of the commercial side of the contract signed on February 9, while Niigata Transys will be responsible for design, manufacturing, testing and staff
RAILWAY Infrastructure Serbia (IZS) will invest Dinars 1.9bn ($US 20m) in line upgrades in 2018 in order to reduce the total sections where speed restrictions are in place to less than 50km. According to general manager Mr Miroljub Jevtić, IZS has already reduced the number of lines impacted by speed restrictions by 40% from 296km
UK: Network Rail has appointed Preservica to create a cloud-based digital archive to preserve and provide secure access to operational information and digital assets. This will include business information generated since 2002, and digitised heritage content including organisational, corporate and operational records such as annual company reports, board meeting minutes, timetables and marketing campaigns dating
BOLIVIA: Ferroviaria Andina has placed the first order for three locomotives to Stadler’s South American Light Loco design, which has been developed specifically for the Latin American market. The SALi locomotives to be manufactured at Stadler’s Valencia plant in Spain are derived from the Eurodual family. Stadler said the ‘ultra-lightweight’ 100 km/h 1 000 mm gauge freight locomotives
PARIS Transport Authority (RATP) and Ile-de-France Mobility have awarded a €157m contract to Alstom for an additional 20 MP14 rubber-tyred metro trains for operation on Line 11. The contract is part of a €20bn 15-year framework deal agreed in March 2015 to supply up 217 MP14 trains, starting with an initial batch of 35 trains, which are
RUSSIA: United Wagon Co produced a total of 19 100 wagons in 2017, up 20% from the previous year thanks to increasing demand for its modern designs as well as wider growth in the freight market. Production in the current year is expected to be between 19 000 and 20 000 wagons. UWC continued to diversify its product
