John Batwell

TANZANIA-Zambia Railway Authority (Tazara) has awarded CSR Qishuyan Locomotive Company, China, a contract worth $US 12.5m to supply four additional type SDD20 diesel locomotives for use on its 1860km line between Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, and New Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia.

GREATER Wellington Regional Council has sold 34 redundant class EM emus built by Ganz-Mavag, Hungary, in 1982, to an unnamed buyer in South Africa, which will refurbish the trains for re-use in Africa.

MOZAMBIQUE's minister of transport and communications Mr Eusébio Saíde unveiled the first four of 10 GE Transportation C30ACi diesel locomotives for Mozambique Railways (CFM) on January 29.

GRINDROD, South Africa, announced on January 20 that its Grindrod Freight Services (GFS) subsidiary has formed a joint venture with the Pemgrani Remgro Infrastructure Fund (PRIF) to provide rolling stock leasing services to railways in Africa.

SOUTH African mining company Kumba Iron Ore has taken delivery of six C30ACi diesel locomotives from GE to shunt heavy-haul trains at its Sishen mine in Northern Cape.

THE FIRST two of 95 Class 20E dual-voltage electric locomotives being supplied to Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) by the CSR E-loco supply consortium was transferred from the port of Durban to the nearby depot at Umbilo on November 14 for commissioning.

BRITISH mining company Beacon Hill Resources has been granted a 7.7% capacity allocation on Mozambique's Sena Line, which will allow it to transport coking and thermal coal from the Moatize Basin in Tete province to the Indian Ocean port of Beira.

THE Alstom-led Gibela consortium has selected a site at Ekurhuleni in the South African province of Gauteng as the location for a Rand 2bn ($US 201m) rolling stock plant, which will assemble commuter trains for Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa).

TRANSNET Freight Rail (TFR), South Africa, is to introduce 200-wagon trains between the coalfields of Mpumalanga province and the port of Richards Bay in an effort to increase the capacity of the corridor to 81 million tonnes in the next financial year.

THE Swazi government says it is confident it can raise the Rand 9bn ($US 882m) it needs to fund its share of the Rand 15.9bn Swazilink line between Lothair in South Africa's Mpumalanga province and Sidvokodvo, Swaziland, before construction starts next year.