AUSTRIAN Federal Railways (ÖBB) is to brand its new fleet of Siemens Desiro emus Cityjet, mimicking the successful Railjet moniker applied to its premium long-distance services.
AUSTRIA's railways experienced a mixed fortunes in 2012 with falling freight volumes offset by rising passenger traffic, according to the annual report from the country's rail regulator Schienen-Control, which was published on July 10.
AFTER several years of poor or mixed results, Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) achieved a strong turnaround in 2012 with a return to profitability.
RAIL Cargo Group (RCG), the recently-renamed railfreight subsidiary of Austrian Federal Railways' (ÖBB), achieved a higher than forecast Ebit last year of €56m compared with a budgeted profit of €13m.
AUSTRIAN Federal Railways (ÖBB) celebrated another landmark in the four-tracking of the Westbahn between Vienna and Linz on April 2 with the opening of the 16.7km Ybbs – Amstetten high-speed line.
THE European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that the First Railway Package does not require member states to have an institutional separation between an infrastructure manager and the incumbent railway operator.
AN Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) RailJet train made a special tour through the Czech Republic yesterday in preparation for the launch of joint operation of RailJet trains by ÖBB and Czech Railways (CD) in December 2014 on the Graz – Vienna Brno – Prague corridor. The service will operate at two-hourly intervals.
THE supervisory boards of Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) Holding and ÖBB Passenger Transport have authorised the executive board to place an order for 100 Desiro ML emus from Siemens, the first batch of trains from a framework contract signed in April 2010.
AUSTRIAN Federal Railways (ÖBB) has published plans for a 250km/h line to link Salzburg and Köstendorf to relieve congestion on the parallel Salzburg – Vienna main line and provide an alternative to the tortuous Salzburg – Steindorf section.
Austria celebrated the opening of the new line from Vienna to St Pölten last month. While passenger journey times have been slashed, freight traffic is suffering from some early teething problems, as Erwin Reidinger reports.