Rail News

Contractors have been celebrating the first breakthrough on the Ceneri Base Tunnel project - 13 months ahead of schedule. The tunnelling milestone occurred 400 metres from the south portal of Vezia in the west tunnel on March 17. Around 1.5 kilometres...

Signalling Solutions Limited (SSL), the Alstom/Balfour Beatty joint venture, has been awarded a €54 million contract to signal the north-eastern section of Crossrail. SSL will supply and install the signalling system on the existing Network Rail infrastructure from Pudding Mill Lane...

First Group has been awarded a one-year extension to continue operating the TransPennine Express franchise. First will retain the franchise until April 2016 under the direct award, which includes a number of commitments to improve services along the route. The Department...

How do you drill a rail tunnel through lava? That is one of the questions facing the construction of a new metro system in Saudi Arabia's fourth-largest city, Madinah. In 2020, Madinah hopes to commission a new three-line metro network and...

South African rail operator Transnet has completed construction of 95 Class 20E electric locomotives in partnership with China's CSR. President Jacob Zuma was at Transnet's factory in Koedoespoort, Pretoria, to celebrate the completion of the final unit. In 2012, Transnet signed a...

Bombardier has been awarded two new contracts for light rail vehicles from the Dusseldorf (Rheinbahn AG) and Cologne transport authorities (KVB). The German manufacturer will build 20 new Flexity units for KVB and 42 for Rheinbahn AG, orders worth €64 million and...

Russian Railways (RZD) has announced the launch of a tender to design and plan the proposed 770-kilometre high-speed railway between Moscow and Kazan. The contract, which has a value of 20.79 billion roubles (€320 million), will include surveying works and route...

Bombardier has presented the 220th, and last, new Flexity tram for Brussels, giving the city the world's largest single-vehicle fleet. Societe des Transports Intercommunaux de Bruxelles (STIB), Brussels' public transport authority, placed its first order for 46 Flexity Outlook trams...

Bombardier and Thales have been awarded a contract by Spain's high-speed rail infrastructure manager, ADIF Velocidad, to deploy ETCS Level 1 between Valencia and Vandellos. The €29.6 million agreement will involve the rollout of ETCS on a 210-kilometre section of...

There have been many articles on ERTMS (European Rail Traffic Management System) and its component elements of ETCS (European Train Control System) and GSM-R, the radio transmission link. Most have been upbeat, confidently predicting that this is the technology to adopt for future interoperability. A minority have alluded to the problems...