A recent review by Mario Draghi suggests that rail can play a key role in supporting Europe’s economic competitiveness and addressing environmental challenges, but sector representatives argue that much remains to be done in the next EU legislative period to address outstanding issues.

AFGHANISTAN: Work has been launched to enhance the Towraghondi freight terminal on the border with Turkmenistan and extend the 1 520 mm gauge rail link to Sanobar in Herat province.

UK: Thameslink has released an audio guide describing its 115 Siemens Mobility Class 700 trains which was written with the help of blind passenger Dave Smith who sits on the operator’s accessibility Advisory Panel.

The historic and complex station at Wellington is being resignalled to permit more frequent services and enhance safety. Infrastructure manager KiwiRail hopes it will pave the way for future upgrades to ETCS.

UK: Siemens Mobility announced new investment of up to £40m and the creation of up to a further 300 jobs when Secretary of State for Transport Louise Haigh and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan attended the official opening of its £200m Goole Rail Village on October 3.

INNOTRANS: Pandrol launched its i+weld portfolio of seven tools at the Berlin trade fair. The products use automation and data to improve the quality, productivity and safety of rail welding, and the suite includes the newly developed i+align tool, which automates the alignment of two rails before welding.

INTERNATIONAL: British infrastructure manager Network Rail and the Korea Railroad Research Institute have signed a memorandum of understanding to work together to improve the resilience of rail infrastructure to extreme weather.

INTERNATIONAL: British infrastructure manager Network Rail and the Korea Railroad Research Institute have signed a memorandum of understanding to work together to improve the resilience of rail infrastructure to extreme weather.

INTERNATIONAL: Three different agreements have been announced in late September by major rolling stock manufacturers for the joint development of high speed trainsets, each building on earlier collaboration.

SAUDI ARABIA: National operator Saudi Arabia Railways has invited expressions of interest in the supply of 200 km/h trainsets to expand and modernise the passenger fleet on the north–south network.

News from the world rail freight market.

Co-operation between suppliers, operators and regulators is essential if technical advances are to deliver an efficient, cost-effective and competitive railway, incoming UNIFE Director General Enno Wiebe tells Chris Jackson.

AUSTRIA: Plasser & Theurer has delivered a maintenance vehicle for use on NÖVOG’s 760 mm gauge Mariazellerbahn.

INNOTRANS: Centrepiece of the Vossloh Rolling Stock presentation at InnoTrans 2024 was a modular battery-fuel cell freight locomotive for Duisport Rail.

ITALY: After a 13 year pause Arenaways is returning to the market in less than 100 days with the operation of two lines in the Piemonte region under PSO contracts.

InnoTrans: Shifting away from using dedicated test vehicles to monitor railway infrastructure in favour of attaching sensors to revenue-earning trains could increase the amount of data collected and processed ‘one-thousand fold’.

GERMANY: Deutsche Bahn’s planned sale of the Schenker land, air and maritime logistics business to Danish transport group DSV was approved by both the DB supervisory board and the federal government on October 2.

EGYPT: Operator RATP Dev is trialling sign language services on the Capital Train line which connects Cairo with the New Administrative Capital.

This week’s news from the global railway supply chain.

UK: The Chief Executive of the Rail Safety & Standards Board has called on the rail freight sector to co-fund research to help achieve the previous government’s ‘bold’ goal of increasing rail freight by 75% by 2050.