FRANCE's secretary of state for transport, Mr Alain Vidalies, has announced plans to stop funding all but two of the Lunéa overnight train services operated by French National Railways (SNCF) and to put their operation out to tender.
DUSSELDORF's €843.6m underground Wehrhahn Line light rail line opened on February 20. Regular operation and closure of the previous on-street route followed overnight with services starting via the new route on February 21.
GERMAN open-access operator derschnellzug.de - which was planning to start services between Stuttgart and Hamburg on March 18 says its planned services will be delayed.
GERMAN Rail (DB) passenger numbers showed a small decline in 2015 according to figures released this week by the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).
AT the end of December German Rail (DB) announced the outcome of months of strategic review, assisted by consulting firm McKinsey, confirming a programme of measures to tackle the company's worsening financial performance.
GERMAN Rail (DB) has announced delays to the introduction of further new IC2 double-deck trains being supplied by Bombardier following problems with the vehicles swaying from side-to-side at speed on some lines on which they have already been deployed.
GERMAN Rail (DB) is one of the world's biggest transport organisations with nearly 297,000 employees (64% of them in Germany) and group turnover of around €40bn in 2015. Yet despite its size and breadth of activities, DB faces an uncertain future - largely driven by changes in its "home" market.
RDC Deutschland, the German subsidiary of Railroad Development Corporation, United States, has begun trial operation of its new Autozug Sylt car and lorry carrying trains on the 39.3km Niebüll - Westerland (Sylt) line in Schleswig Holstein.
GERMANY's Altona-Kaltenkirchen-Neumünster Railway (AKN) has taken delivery of the last of 14 Coradia Lint 54 DMUs, which were ordered from Alstom in 2013 in a deal worth €60m.
HAMBURG U-Bahn operator Hamburger Hochbahn has exercised an option worth around €100m with Alstom for a further 27 DT5 trains.
