Keith Fender

TATA Steel has been awarded contracts to supply 7000 tonnes of rails for the Crossrail east-west rail link across central London.

TRENITALIA has announced plans to remove two of its train ferries from the Straits of Messina, which will result in the loss of its daytime inter-city services from the Sicilian cities of Palermo and Siracuse to Naples and Rome, and the overnight service to Milan.

POLISH infrastructure manager PKP has commissioned WYG Consulting to carry out a feasibility study of the electrification and modernisation of approximately 100km of the Lublin - Stalowa Wola line in southeast Poland.

GERMANY's infrastructure manager, DB Networks, has informed open-access intercity operator Hamburg-Köln-Express (HKX) that it can only have three of the six paths it requested for a new service from Bonn to Berlin, which would make the service unviable.

HUNGARY's Györ-Sopron-Ebenfurth Railway (GySEV) is planning to form a joint venture company with German Rail (DB) to develop freight traffic from the Black Sea to Passau on the German/Austrian border.

GERMANY's railfreight operators failed to capitalise on growth in the overall freight transport market last year as strikes held back volumes, according to preliminary annual figures released on February 13 by the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis).

PASSENGER numbers on the German rail network reached their highest recorded level in 2014, according to annual figures published on February 12 by the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).

LEIPZIG has become the third German city to order Tramino low-floor LRVs from Polish manufacturer Solaris.

PUGET Sound regional transport authority Sound Transit has been awarded a $US 1.33bn federal loan by the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) to fund the expansion of Seattle's light rail network.

NETINERA'S Four Land Express (Vlexx) concession, which took over regional services in parts of three western German federal states plus cross-border trains to Alsace, France, on December 14, has been forced to offer a reduced service due to shortages of trains and drivers.