List view / Grid view
28 January 2010 | By Luc Vansteenkiste, Director General of Access to the Network, Infrabel
Infrabel, the Belgian railway infrastructure manager, is busy working on building a direct rail link between the Left and the Right Bank in the Port of Antwerp: the Liefkenshoek rail link. In mid-January 2010, the project company LOCORAIL NV started boring the first of two tunnel shafts. In a conversation…
28 January 2010 | By Dan Mandoc, ERTMS/GSM-R Project Manager, UIC
Over the last few years, the UIC has written many updates about the GSM-R situation in Europe for Global Railway Review and 2009 was a good year for GSM-R, despite the overall difficult economic environment. Finland is the latest country who has changed its colour on the UIC GSM-R implementation…
28 January 2010 | By Pascal Bertrand, QATS GSM-R Product Manager, Expandium
Because safety is a vital concern for all players in the rail industry, Expandium has designed QATS – a highly efficient troubleshooting solution enabling technical staff to detect network malfunctions early and correct them. With QATS, Expandium’s experts have met the challenge to display and monitor the performance of a…
28 January 2010 | By Rémi Bévot, GSM-R Project Director and Olivier Labourdette, GSM-R Project Manager, SNCF Engineering
Many railway operators have decided to implement ground-to-train radios on their networks in the fourth quarter of the 20th century, which was, for most of them, variants of a UIC specific analogue technology. In order to anticipate the upcoming obsolescence of this existing radio and having in mind the objective…
28 January 2010 | By Pierpaolo Di Labio, Business Development Manager, Transport Market, SELEX Communications SpA
Communications are one of the components that lead the train operating company to be efficient, secure and safe. Railway telecommunication systems have to work 24 hours a day and 365 days a year with a negligible downtime: therefore they must have an extremely high level of availability and reliability. Lives…
28 January 2010 | By Martijn Kuijpers, Director, Clear CinCom
There are important differences between traditional radio planning and the construction of a GSM-R network, explains GSM-R consultant Martijn Kuijpers. “The nature of GSM-R and elaborate government requirements make constructing a well optimised GSM-R radio network a very specific challenge.”
28 January 2010 | By Johann Garstenauer, Head of Railway Solutions, Nokia Siemens Networks
Today’s railway networks are undergoing a renaissance. With high-speed lines competing for much of the business of short haul and domestic air traffic, railways are attracting passengers at an ever growing rate. Modern digital communications technology is ready to support this transformation.
28 January 2010 | By Matej Augustín, Chief Executive Officer, ZSSK CARGO
Železničná spoločnosť Cargo Slovakia, a.s., (ZSSK CARGO) is a strategic rail transportation undertaking in Slovakia with a transported volume market share of approximately 95%. It is a company with the densest network of tariff points within Slovakia and key transhipment whilst pumping through capacities to the border with Ukraine.
28 January 2010 | By László Mosóczi, Member of the Board, Chief Operating Officer, Head of MÁV Infrastructure
Hungarian State Railways Co. (MÁV) is characterised by limited market and financial opportunities which are determined by the obligation to sustain the level of service, the application of obligatory ticket prices, limited budgetary compensations and by limited debt raising opportunities. After a couple of decades, the first years of the…
28 January 2010 | By Branimir Jerneić, President, HŽ Infrastruktura Management Board
Like in the case of all European railways recently, the global recession found its reflection in freight transport volumes, which in 2009 decreased by 24% in comparison with 2008. Passenger transport increased by 4%, but its increase is much smaller than those recorded in recent years, when passenger transport was…
28 January 2010 | By Michaël Steenbergen, Academic Researcher in the field of Railway Engineering, Delft University of Technology
Current design philosophies of railway tracks are based on the conception of a railway system as a statically loaded system. This is directly translated into two classical principles: load spreading and stiffness reduction in downward direction. A ‘layered’ track design results in order to transfer the enormous wheel-rail contact stresses…
12 December 2009 | By Dave Curtis, General Manager, Freightliner Maintenance Ltd (FML)
The decision by UK's Freightliner Group to set up its own maintenance division has yielded transformational improvements to business performance. Maintenance of locomotives and rolling stock is a core necessity to any successful rail operator - one that is not at the forefront of attention, but when it is not…
12 December 2009 | By Craig Waters, Commissioning Editor
If a railway network is in need of track renewal, it is vitally important that the procedures are carried out to the best possible standards. Network downtime needs to be kept to an absolute minimum and it is therefore essential for infrastructure owners to invest heavily in high-tech track renewal…
12 December 2009 | By James Abbott, Technical Editor
One of the biggest public transport projects in the world has started in London. Crossrail will provide welcome work at a time when other parts of the construction sector are experiencing a downturn. London is the poor relation amongst European cities when it comes to cross-city suburban rail links. While…
12 December 2009 | By Dirk Diederich, General Manager for Project Business, Rhomberg Bahntechnik GmbH
The North Access Section to the Brenner Tunnel is particularly important to rail transport within Europe as part of the TEN 1 - Axis Berlin-Palermo in a north-south direction and as the main east-west traffic artery in the junction with the Lower Inn rail link. Security, in particular, is a…
