David Shirres BSc CEng MIMechE DEM

The feature in our March issue that considered the electrification required for a zero-carbon railway attracted a great deal of interest. This included a map showing that between 4,300 and 6,300 route kilometres of electrification was likely to be...

Andrew Haines considers a post-Covid railway Network Rail chief executive Andrew Haines holds round-table briefings with the editors of the rail industry’s press, including Rail Engineer and sister publication RailStaff, every six months or so. On 8 June, thanks to the...

The December timetable change saw Scotland getting its 358th railway station and the reinstatement of a station platform that was removed in the late 1980s. The new station at Robroyston, north east of Glasgow, and the new platform at...

David Shirres reviews the completion of the first phase of the Aberdeen to Inverness improvement programme.

Britain’s ‘feast and famine’ approach to electrification is illustrated by the graph of UK electrification volumes delivered since 1958. In 2018, Britain will electrify almost 900 single track km (stk), followed by less than 200 stk in 2019, after which there are no committed schemes. In contrast, Germany has been electrifying around a steady 200 stk a year for the past 40 years.

There is to be a full 8-car electric service between Edinburgh and Glasgow in July offering 27 per cent more seats.

When Abellio took over the ScotRail franchise in April 2015, it had 22 months to replace six-coach diesel trains on the Edinburgh to Glasgow main line with seven-coach electric trains, as required by its franchise specification. To do so, the following month, the company signed a contract with Hitachi for 24 four-car and 46 three-car […]

CAF has a record order book of €6.3 billion, of which 63 per cent is for new vehicles and the remainder for services and components.