GUILLAUME Pepy, president of French National Railways (SNCF), today marked the completion of 10 years of work when he inaugurated the rebuilt St Lazare station in Paris. With 1600 trains and 450,000 passengers a day, St Lazare is the second busiest station in France.

TRAFFIC on the Betuweroute, the dedicated freight line from Rotterdam to the German border near Emmerich, increased by 30% in 2011 to 23,000 trains.

DENMARK's infrastructure manager Banedanmark has shortlisted six bidders for civil works contracts on the country's first high-speed line, which will link Copenhagen to Ringsted.

Despite the fact that Europe is no closer to having an interoperable railway through the creation of a standard signalling system, a strategy is now emerging for the rollout of ETCS in many countries, as David Briginshaw explains.

German Rail (DB) is spearheading the campaign to get open-source software accepted for ETCS applications in Europe, awarding the first contract for open-source onboard equipment, as David Briginshaw reports.

With Cetest, Spain, carrying out tests on Oaris, CAF's first high-speed train, Igor Alonso Portillo, Cetest's director of strategy and business development, explains the testing procedures required for the latest high-speed train technologies.

The Swiss Federal Council has recommended payments of SFr 6.62bn ($US 7.44bn) to maintain Switzerland's railway infrastructure under the terms of the 2013 - 2016 performance agreement with Swiss Federal Railways (SBB).