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MONTREAL Transport (STM) has selected a Bombardier-Alstom consortium to supply 468 metro cars to gradually replace the city's 44 year-old train fleet. The deal is worth a total of $C 1.2 billion ($US 1.18 billion), with Bombardier taking a $C 742 million share and Alstom $C 493 million.

HITACHI and Toyo Denki Seizo today announced they will form a strategic alliance in electrical components for rolling stock to compete for international contracts. The two companies say they will cooperate in projects outside Japan and Europe by sharing systems integration work and supplying each other's products where appropriate.

EUROSTAR is defending its decision to order 10 high-speed trains from Siemens after rival bidder Alstom announced it will mount a legal challenge against the decision.

FRENCH Rail Network (RFF) has selected the Lisea consortium headed by Vinci Concession for a public-private partnership concession to build the Sud-Europe Atlantique high-speed line linking Tours and Bordeaux. Lisea also includes Caisse des Dépôts and AXA Private Equity.

IRELAND'S Railway Procurment Agency (RPA) announced on October 20 that it will submit an application for a Railway Order for Metro West, a light metro line from Old Blessington Road in Tallaght to Dardistown, just south of Dublin Airport.

BRITAIN's Department for Transport will have to reduce resource spending by 21% and capital expenditure by 11% in real terms over the next four years as a result of the government's decision to cut public spending by an average of 19% to reduce its massive budget deficit.

PAULISTA Metropolitan Trains Company (CPTM) has placed a Euros 80 million contract with Alstom for nine eight-car emus to operate on the São Paulo suburban rail network. The Metropolis trains will be built in Brazil and delivery will be completed by mid-2012.

GERMAN RAIL (DB) will launch direct services from London to Cologne, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam in 2013, CEO Dr Rüdiger Grube announced today during the first visit of an ICE3 high-speed train to London St Pancras International station. DB will be the first new passenger operator to run services through the Channel Tunnel since it opened in 1994 marking the end of Eurostar's monopoly on the route.

THE CEO of Eurotunnel, Mr Jacques Gounon, says the evacuation trials conducted in the Channel Tunnel last weekend with two ICE trains belonging to German Rail (DB) "were more successful than we expected." Gounon says two trials to evacuate 300 people from the trains were conducted. The more complicated evacuation involving people moving from one train to the other was completed in 20 minutes, while what he describes as the "more obvious way to evacuate a train" through the doors to the cross passages took just 15 minutes. The requirement is to evacuate a train within 90 minutes.

THE final metre of rock was broken through this afternoon on the eastern bore of the 57km Gotthard base tunnel beneath the Swiss Alps, making it the world's longest railway tunnel. The Swiss also claim it is the deepest railway tunnel with a rock overburden of 2500m.