EGYPT: British Steel has won a multi-million-pound contract to supply 9 500 tonnes of rail from its Scunthorpe plant in the UK for use on the 250 km/h Green Line railway. This corridor will link Mersa Matruh on the Mediterranean coast with Alexandria, the New Administrative Capital and the port ...

EUROPE: Polish company CLIP Intermodal has awarded Alstom a contract to supply 13 third-generation Traxx multi-system electric locomotives approved for use in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria and Poland.

UK: CrossCountry has selected Alstom as preferred bidder to refurbish its fleet of Voyager and Turbostar DMUs over a broadly two-year period as part of an investment package aimed at increasing capacity on its network by up to 25%.

UK: The Railway Industry Association has published a ‘fresh blueprint’ for ticketing reform, saying a focus on customer experience and boosting ridership could drive revenue growth without needing to increase fares.

UK: Winvic Construction Ltd has begun work on Phase 2 of the iPort Rail project, which will double the size of the rail freight terminal in Doncaster.

GERMANY: At a ceremony in Berlin Hauptbahnhof on March 19 Deutsche Bahn took delivery of the final ICE4 trainset, which was named Spree to mark the occasion and ‘baptised’ with water from the river of the same name.

SOUTH KOREA: The initial 28 km section of the Great Train Express commuter rail network in the Seoul conurbation, linking Suseo with Dongtan has opened.

EUROPE: Strategies to attract new talent to the rail sector were discussed at the Next–Gen Rail: Building The Workforce Of Tomorrow For the Rail Sector conference which was hosted by UNIFE in Brussels on March 27.

FRANCE: Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes région has signed a contract with SNCF Voyageurs to operate local passenger services from 2024 to 2033.

UK: Hitachi has launched TREsim Flex, a realistic offline training environment for signallers that accurately replicates operational events.

SWITZERLAND: Stadler has delivered the first of two railcars which it is supplying to re-equip the Dolderbahn rack railway in Zürich.

INDIA: Saft has supplied more than 30 sets of ReGenPro batteries to provide standby power for operational and safety systems in the tunnels on the Banihal – Sangaldan section of the Udhampur – Kashmir railway.

USA: The automated inspection of commuter rolling stock is to be trialled on New York’s Metro-North Railroad, supported by a $2m grant from the federal Department of Transportation’s Strengthening Mobility & Revolutionizing Transportation programme.

LITHUANIA: National passenger operator LTG Link has deployed IVU Traffic Technologies’ IVU.rail software for planning and dispatch.

BULGARIA: CRRC Qingdao Sifang Locomotive has withdrawn its bid for a contract to supply 20 push-pull trainsets, after the European Commission launched an investigation into whether the Chinese state-owned company might have benefited from an unfair subsidy.

UK: Leasing company Porterbrook has bought three Zephir LOK 16.300 depot shunters which will be leased to GB Railfreight for use at the Celsa Steel works in Cardiff.

GERMANY: Following a European tender, transport authorities go.Rheinland and VRR have selected incumbent DB Regio for a contract to operate Köln S-Bahn services until December 2032.

HUNGARY: Hungarian-Austrian cross-border operator GySEV has signed a contract for Stadler to supply nine inter-city electric multiple-units with an option for four more.

IRELAND: National railway Iarnród Éireann and Dogpatch Labs have launched Future Track which aims to bring a ‘start-up mindset’ to innovation in the rail sector.

SWITZERLAND: SBB and Alstom have carried out a series of trials using a remotely controlled shunting locomotive on tracks that remained open for normal operations.