BRITAIN's Department for Transport (DfT) has invited bids for the first two passenger rail franchises since the cancellation of the West Coast franchise in October 2012 following the discovery of flaws in the DfT's bid evaluation process.

BRITAIN'S National Skills Academy for Railway Engineering (NSARE) announced on September 24 that approval has been granted for the development of a new training academy for rolling stock engineers, which will be built at Siemens' Kings Heath maintenance depot in Northampton.

URAL Locomotives, the Russian joint venture between Siemens and Sinara, unveiled a prototype 1520mm-gauge ac electric locomotive at the Expo 1520 exhibition in Shcherbinka near Moscow on September 12.

CALGARY Transit announced on September 11 that it has concluded a $C 192m ($US 186m) contract with Siemens Canada for 60 S200 light rail vehicles for the city's CTrain network.

SIEMENS and Russian Machines have announced that they intend to submit a joint bid in a tender for new trains for the Moscow metro, which is due to be issued by the end of the year.

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.

ALGIERS Metro Enterprise (EMA) has awarded a contract worth about €20m to Siemens to install communications-based train control (CBTC) on a 4km underground extension to Line 1 of the Algiers metro.

TWO European open-access operators have signed contracts with Siemens for a total of five 15kV ac Vectron locomotives, which will be used on freight services in Germany and Austria.

VIENNESE public transport operator Wiener Linien has begun trial operation of the EcoTram, a Siemens ULF light rail vehicle equipped with low-energy heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems.

INFRASTRUCTURE Leasing and Financial Services Rail (IF&LS), the Indian company which holds the PPP concession to build the metro in Gurgaon south of Delhi, has awarded Siemens a turnkey contract worth around Rs 5.65bn ($US 92m) to supply signalling, electrification, and rolling stock for the second phase of the network.