Rail.co

Crystal Palace station improvement work to begin

A. Samuel — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:44:27 +0000

Work to upgrade London Overground’s Crystal Palace station will begin ‘in the next few weeks’, Transport for London has said. The upgrade includes three new lifts from ticket hall to platform level, improved CCTV, customer information screens, a PA system, and new signage following a complete station refurbishment. The Grade II listed ticket hall of [...]

HRH The Prince of Wales visits Bombardier Derby

A. Samuel — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:33:24 +0000

Bombardier’s site in Derby today welcomed His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, as part of a tour of the region to show his support for British manufacturing. Bombardier’s Derby site is the UK’s only rolling stock manufacturing facility. The Prince spent more than an hour at the site, where he met key members of [...]

GB Railfreight awarded Crossrail excavation transport contract

A. Samuel — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:02:12 +0000

BFK (BAM/Ferrovial/Kier JV) has appointed GB Railfreight to transport excavated material from Crossrail’s Royal Oak Portal to Northfleet. Crossrail tunnelling will commence at Royal Oak next month. Excavated material generated from the tunnelling operations for the western tunnels (Royal Oak to Farringdon) will exit at the Royal Oak Portal and be transported by freight train [...]

Pacific National awarded coal haulage contract in Queensland

A. Samuel — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 14:46:10 +0000

Asciano announced recently that its Pacific National coal haulage business has entered into a 15 year performance based take or pay contract with Springsure Creek Coal Pty Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bandanna Energy. The contract is for the annual movement of up to 4 million tonnes from its proposed Springsure Creek mine in [...]

Pacific National awarded coal haulage contract in Queensland

A. Samuel — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 14:46:10 +0000

Line 3 of Cairo metro opens

A. Samuel — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 11:39:01 +0000

The first phase of Line 3 of the Cairo metro was opened earlier this week. The €235 million Phase 1 civil engineering contract covered construction of a 4.2 km tunnel section and five stations. The project was built by a consortium, led by VINCI Construction Grands Projets, comprising Bouygues Travaux Publics, Orascom and Arab Contractors. [...]

Kansas City Southern Railway $54.6m for new locomotives

A. Samuel — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 11:05:06 +0000

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced a $54.6 million loan to Kansas City Southern Railway Company (KCSR) for the purchase of 30 new General Electric ES44AC locomotives. These diesel-electric locomotives, built in Erie, Pennsylvania, will help KCSR meet increasing economic demand, and are more energy-efficient and produce significantly less carbon emissions than the locomotives [...]

Go-Ahead sees ‘strong growth’ in rail division

A. Samuel — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:30:58 +0000

Transport operator Go-Ahead has seen ‘strong growth’ in its rail division but announced a 12.9% fall it its profit for the first half of the year. Go-Ahead operates the London Midland, Southeastern and Southern rail franchises, and said pre-tax profit fell to £39.2m from £45m. However, London Midland saw record passenger growth of 11% during [...]

Crossrail confirms Custom House station bidders

A. Samuel — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:52:58 +0000

Crossrail has confirmed the shortlist for the £35 million Custom House station. The four shortlisted bidders for the contract are Laing O’Rourke, Hochtief UK in a joint venture with its German arm, Costain and Geoffrey Osborne Limited. The new Crossrail Custom House station, located in east London, is the only above ground station within Crossrail’s [...]

Grand Central clean sweep

Andy-Milne — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:30:06 +0000

Richard McClean has been appointed managing director of Grand Central. The open access operator, which runs direct services between Sunderland, Hartlepool and London, was taken over by Arriva UK last year. Mr McLean will continue as head of the group’s Tyne and Wear Metro operation. Sean English, currently Grand Central’s operations director, will take on [...]

Southern switch for Gatwick

Andy-Milne — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:25:07 +0000

The day-to-day management of Gatwick Airport station has transferred from Network Rail to Southern. Says Southern Director, David Scorey, ‘We already manage 156 stations and it’s that station management experience, which includes provision of excellent levels of customer service and train dispatch, which is at the core of our business. It was the obvious thing [...]

Children take train wash trip

Andy-Milne — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:20:53 +0000

MTR’s newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, Jay Walder, recently joined a group of local school children from Hong Kong as they rode through the automatic train wash plant at Kowloon Bay Depot on an MTR train. Staff volunteers helped with MTR’s ‘More Time Reaching the Community’ Depot Open Day. A number of smart yellow engineering [...]

Four men charged following theft from railway

A. Samuel — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:53:37 +0000

Four men have been arrested and charged with theft by British Transport Police (BTP) following an incident near Bridgend in South Wales on Tuesday, 21 February. BTP officers were responding to a report of a suspected theft at a storage compound near the railway at Water Street, Pyle. Four men were arrested at the scene [...]

Murphy innovation improves production rates

The Rail Engineer Team — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:11:45 +0000

Written by J. Murphy & Sons Limited Innovative construction techniques used by J. Murphy & Sons Limited on a tunnel brickwork repair project for Network Rail, not only overcame local difficulty and produced time and cost savings, but are now set to improve production rates at other sites, as Paul Mohan from the project team, [...]

Sporting heroes back Translink NI Railways & Samaritans campaign

A. Samuel — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:00:28 +0000

Translink NI Railways and Samaritans have joined forces to launch ‘We’re In Your Corner’; a hard-hitting campaign to promote the charity’s emotional support services and help prevent suicides on the local rail network. The new partnership also provides support for Translink employees who find themselves in challenging and highly sensitive circumstances when dealing with someone [...]

Romsey rail bridge reconstruction set to begin

A. Samuel — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:38:53 +0000

A three-month project to replace the bridge in Romsey which carries the A27 (Southampton Road) over the railway to enable larger freight containers to be transported by rail is scheduled to start on Saturday 31 March 2012. The work, which will require the road to be closed, was originally scheduled to start in December 2011, [...]

Prime Minister visits Crossrail site

A. Samuel — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:10:51 +0000

Prime Minister David Cameron visited Crossrail’s Westbourne Park site in west London recently to view the tunnel boring machines (TBMs) ahead of Crossrail tunnelling commencing next month. The Prime Minister was joined by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to meet engineers and construction workers and to hear more about tunnelling preparations for Europe’s largest civil [...]

Major trackwork on Sydney’s South Coast Line

A. Samuel — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:00:31 +0000

Trackwork will be taking place on Sydney’s South Coast Line for two weeks from Monday 27 February to Sunday 11 March. Buses will replace weekday trains between Bomaderry (Nowra) and Dapto from Monday 27 February to Friday 9 March and between Bomaderry (Nowra) and Wollongong on early morning weekday services from 12.15am to 4am. Trains [...]

Nippon Sharyo awarded rolling stock contract by Virginia Railway Express

A. Samuel — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:00:36 +0000

Virginia Railway Express (VRE) has awarded a contract to Nippon Sharyo and Sumitomo Corporation of America for 50 Gallery-type Bi-level passenger cars. The contract price is $21 million for the base order which is to supply 8 cars, and includes an option to purchase an additional 42 cars. The total contract amount with the option [...]

Fenchurch farewell for Trevor

Andy-Milne — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 11:00:26 +0000

Trevor Capps, who worked for c2c at Fenchurch Street station in London, is retiring after over 48 years in the rail industry. Trevor joined the railway in 1963 at Southend East station. For the majority of his career he has worked on station platforms, despatching trains and looking after passengers. He has also worked stints [...]

49 killed in Argentina train crash

A. Samuel — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:36:10 +0000

Officials have said that at least 49 people have been killed and over 600 injured in a train crash in Argentina. The incident, at Once station in Buenos Aires, happened during morning rush hour as the train hit the end of the platform. Transportation Secretary JP Schiavi said: “We assume that there was some fault [...]

Dangerous delivery lorries turned away from Crossrail sites

A. Samuel — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:30:02 +0000

Lorries that don’t comply with new safety rules to protect cyclists will be ‘turned away’ from Crossrail construction sites, Crossrail has said. We reported earlier this month how Keyline has upgraded 14 of its vehicles (pictured) to meet the new specifications. The project is backing a campaign for safer delivery lorries after a spate of [...]

Bilfinger Berger awarded major rail contracts in Berlin

A. Samuel — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:03:02 +0000

Bilfinger Berger has won two major contracts for the expansion of Berlin’s public transport system. The contracts include the construction of a new underground rail line in the centre of the German capital and a link between the main station and the urban rail ring. They have a combined value of around €230 million. The new [...]

Tower disappears

Andy-Milne — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:00:15 +0000

The Stephenson Tower has finally disappeared from Birmingham’s city skyline. The demolition of the 22 storey 1960s residential tower block is the first stage towards the construction of the new John Lewis department store which gets underway later in the spring. Sitting above Platform 12 of New Street station, in the heart of the city [...]

Numbers soar at Parkway

Andy-Milne — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:00:18 +0000

East Midlands Parkway is celebrating its third birthday. Record numbers of passengers have used the station in the last year. Since 2009, the station’s first year of operation, the number of passengers travelling from East Midlands Parkway has increased by almost 120 per cent, soaring to around 450,000 journeys. The station, at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, [...]