Recommended

Just released! Global Railway Review Issue 4
READ NOW: Editor’s Review – InnoTrans 2024
DOWNLOAD NOW: 2025 media planner
LISTEN NOW: The Right Track Podcast Series, Ep11 – Infrastructure Revolution

List view / Grid view

Rail Articles

Tunnelling for and into the future of European railways

17 September 2010 | By Prof. Dr.-Ing. Alfred Haack, Past President of ITA – International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association and former Executive Board Member of STUVA – Research Association for Underground Transportation Facilities

The remarkable volume of tunnelling on a worldwide basis during the last two or three decades (see Figure 1) is not defined by the demands to improve the railway networks in many countries. Stimulation in this direction is especially given by the generally highly ranked socio-political requirement of improved mobility…

Progress on the Madrid–Levante high-speed line

17 September 2010 | By ADIF

The Madrid–Castilla La Mancha–Comunidad Valenciana-Región de Murcia high-speed line is one of the greatest works in Spanish and the world’s civil engineering history, both for its length – 955km – and for the new technologies applied in its construction. This line, in which €12.4 million have been invested, is one…

Portuguese high-speed rail business model: a new way forward on PPP

17 September 2010 | By Isabel Falcão de Campos, Legal Director, RAVE and Pedro Leite Alves, Legal Advisor, Jardim, Sampaio, Magalhães e Silva

1 June 2009 marks the day, exactly 12 months after the international Public-Private Partnership (PPP) tender for the Poceirão–Caia high-speed rail line (HSRL) was launched, when best and final offers were in and the procedure which would lead to a successful financial close on 8 May 2010 was initiated.

Predicting the future for switches and crossings

17 September 2010 | By Ian Coleman & Andrew Cornish, Network Rail PhD Students (Switches and Crossings) at the Future Railway Research Centre, Imperial College London

Maintaining and renewing the thousands of switches and crossings (or ‘S&C’ and also known as railway points and/or turnouts) across Britain’s rail network is an expensive business, costing hundreds of millions of pounds every year. Gaining a better understanding of the dynamic forces that occur when a train passes over…

FLEXXSpeed Bogies for ZEFIRO 380 – the new very high-speed train for China

17 September 2010 | By Heiko Mannsbarth, Chief Engineer & Product Manager for Mainline & Metro Bogies, Bombardier Transportation and Heiko Mannsbarth, Chief Engineer & Product Manager for Mainline & Metro Bogies, Bombardier Transportation.

In the 1950s and 1960s, specific programmes were initiated to increase service speeds on rail. In Europe and Japan especially, these efforts lead to a considerable increase in the attractiveness for long-distance travellers to choose rail instead of air or road transportation through shortening journey times.

The desire to shift from road to rail

4 August 2010 | By Doris Bures, Federal Minister of Transport, Innovation and Technology, Austria

The railways in Europe continue to face disadvantages in competition with roads. The only way to achieve fair competition in the transport sector is to reflect the true costs of each mode of transport, including factors such as climate protection, social issues, health aspects and safety. Unfortunately, some approaches at…

The festival city of Salzburg gets a unique entrée

4 August 2010 | By Johannes Gfrerer, Spokesman for the Salzburg Region, ÖBB-Holding AG and Thomas Wörndl, Project Manager for the reconstruction of the Salzburg Hauptbahnhof

€270 million will be invested in the creation of a unique transport station in the festival city of Salzburg that is to be completed by 2014. The new through station will do full justice to the requirements of a modern railway age as a regional and international transport hub. High…

Gotthard and Ceneri take major steps forward

4 August 2010 | By Renzo Simoni, CEO, AlpTransit Gotthard Ltd

Construction of the new Gotthard line with the Gotthard and Ceneri Base Tunnels is on course. In October 2010, a further milestone will be the final breakthrough of the Gotthard: the miners will excavate the last stretch of rock between the portals at Erstfeld and Bodio/Pollegio. On the Ceneri, in…

Construction of cross-city link helps relieve capacity limits

4 August 2010 | By Marco Ceriani, Line Section Manager for the Weinberg Tunnel, SBB Infrastructure

Zurich Hauptbahnhof (Zurich main station, or Zurich HB) is the central hub for rail traffic in Switzerland. Trains pull in and out of the station virtually every minute, and over 300,000 passengers depart, arrive or change trains here daily. Commuter traffic is forecast to grow in the coming years, and…

Taking the ‘action not reaction’ future approach

4 August 2010 | By Philippe Gauderon, Head of SBB Infrastructure and Member of the SBB Management Board

Most of the SBB rail network is in good condition. That was the conclusion of an external survey commissioned by SBB and published in February 2010. Future maintenance and renewal of the rail infrastructure will cost significantly more than was previously assumed. SBB Infrastructure has embarked on a comprehensive action…

SMART Surveying

4 August 2010 | By Angus W. Stocking, Industry Author

Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) is an overwhelmingly popular rail initiative in Northern California and is to begin service in 2014. Planners estimate that the new commuter rail system can be built for approximately $7.1 million dollars per mile, which compares very favourably to the cost of extending other local…

The case for high-speed rail – Britain’s 21st century travel solution

4 August 2010 | By Prof Andrew McNaughton FREng, Chief Engineer, High Speed Two Ltd and Global Railway Review Editorial Board Member

In Britain, about once a century for the last few hundred years a new long-distance surface transport system has been planned and built to meet the developing needs of a continually advancing society. The 18th century brought the canals and the 19th the railways, both initially more focussed on transporting…

Developing high-speed rail transport in Russia

4 August 2010 | By Vladimir Yakunin, President, Russian Railways

The changing economic situation in Russia, and the increase in business and transport activity among the country’s population in recent years, served as an incentive to draw up the Programme for the Development of High-Speed and Very High-Speed Transport, as part of the Strategy for Developing Rail Transport in the…

Energy efficiency in high-speed train operation

4 August 2010 | By Paloma Cucala García and Antonio Fernández Cardador IIT, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, España

Reduction of energy consumption has become a global concern, and the EU is committed to reducing its overall emissions to at least 20% below 1990 levels by 2020. In the transport sector, measures are focused on planning, infrastructure, modal change, the renewal of vehicles and also programmes for efficient driving.…

Improving Melbourne’s metropolitan train system one step at a time

3 August 2010 | By Andrew Lezala, CEO, Metro Trains Melbourne (Metro)

Six months in to its contract as operator of Melbourne’s metropolitan train network, Metro’s focus is firmly on improving asset reliability, simplifying the timetable and making every minute count. In 2009, the Victorian Government selected a new contractor to operate Melbourne’s metropolitan rail services. The network assets, which are Government-owned…