In brief
DB infrastructure spending to reach €4.6bn in 2014 G
ERMAN Rail (DB) management board member for infrastructure and services Dr Volker Kefer announced on December 12 that DB will spend around ƒ4.6bn on infrastructure renewal and investment this year, with maintenance expenditure set to increase by around ƒ200m.
This year DB Networks plans to renew more than 3000km of track, 2350 switches and crossings, two million sleepers, and four million
tonnes of ballast across its 34,000 route-km network. DB says it is looking to coordinate projects on specific routes in order to minimise disruption to traffic. Key projects for 2014
include: infrastructure works on the Hamburg - Hannover line, including the completion of the third track on the Stelle -
Lüneburg section refurbishment of the original Schlüchtern tunnel on the Frankfurt - Fulda line
bridge refurbishment between Rosenheim and
Salzburg track and platform renewal on the Graben-Neudorf - Karlsruhe Hagsfeld section of the Mannheim - Karlsruhe line, requiring a blockade between July 31 and
September 15 upgrading of the Munich - Ingolstadt line for 200km/h
operation, and reconstruction of the long- distance platforms (platforms 10-15) at Leipzig Main Station.
Belarus
Belarusian Railways (BC) has signed a contract with China National Electric Import/ Export Corporation (CUEC) for the electrification of the line from Molodechno, north of Minsk, to Gudogai and the Lithuanian border. The ƒ65m project is being 85% financed by the China Exim Bank and is due to be completed next year.
Britain
East Midlands Trains launched accelerated services between London, central England and Sheffield on December 9 following the completion of a £70m project to upgrade sections of the Midland Main Line for 200km/h operation. The project has reduced the fastest London - Sheffield
journey time to two hours. Secretary of state for transport Mr Patrick McLoughlin inaugurated the new Trackwork Moll sleeper manufacturing plant in Doncaster on December 9. The facility employs 45 staff and will supply around 400,000 concrete sleepers per year to infrastructure manager Network Rail.
Vossloh puts DRS class 68s through their paces: Performance testing and certification of the first Vossloh class 68 UKLight diesel locomotives for British open-access operator Direct Rail Services (DRS) is underway at the Velim test circuit in the Czech Republic, while a second unit has been unveiled in the company’s new livery at the Vossloh Rail Vehicles plant in Albuixech, Spain. DRS says a comprehensive test programme will take place at Velim over the next three months before the 2.8MW locomotive is returned to Valencia for final preparations for delivery to Britain, which is scheduled for the second quarter. The second locomotive from the order for 15 units is undergoing tests at Albuixech and is due to be delivered to Britain in the next few months.
LLIANCE Rail Holdings has announced plans to invest up to £300m to introduce an hourly-interval open-access service - operated by its Great North Eastern Railway subsidiary - between London King’s Cross and Edinburgh on Britain’s East Coast Main Line (ECML) using a fleet of Pendolino trains acquired from Alstom. Alliance says it will start consultation immediately with Network Rail and the other ECML train operators. Their comments together with Alliance’s responses will then form part of its submission for paths to the Office of Rail
IRJ January 2014
Alliance plans London- Edinburgh open-access service A
Regulation at the end of January. If Alliance is granted paths in time the new service could start in December 2016. Alliance says it will need 12 nine-car trains to operate 14 services per day in each direction. It will either purchase the trains directly from Alstom or acquire them through a rolling stock leasing company. The Pendolinos would be a TSI-compliant version of the trains Alstom has supplied to Virgin Trains for the West Coast Main Line. The introduction of tilting trains on the ECML would also require investment in track and lineside equipment.
Canada
The trains will only make one intermediate stop in Newcastle to achieve a London - Edinburgh journey time of 3h 43min, compared with a current fastest time by East Coast of four hours, while the London - Newcastle journey time would be cut from 2h 36min to 2h 29min. Alliance says by running the trains at 225km/h, rather than the present limit of 200km/h, it would be possible to reduce the London - Edinburgh journey time to 3h 30min, but this would require upgrading the signalling, the first phase of which is planned for completion in 2018.
Canadian National (CN) has launched a $C 10m ($US 9.4m) programme to enhance the early detection of defects in rails and wheelsets. The programme includes 30 new Wayside Equipment System units to detect hot bearings, hot wheels and dragging equipment; a new track geometry test car; an optical track inspection system; and more than 30 new brittle bar detectors, which identify and flag derailed vehicles to traincrews.
China
Construction was formally launched last month on the 247km Nanping - Sanming - Longyan high-speed line. The Yuan 25bn ($US 4.1bn) project
is due to be completed in 2017. Test operation began last month on the Nanning - Qinzhou - Fangchenggang high-speed line. The line is designed for operation at up to 250km/h.
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Photo: DRS
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