Quintus Vosman

NETHERLANDS Railways (NS) concluded a contract worth more than €800m with Alstom on July 15 for 79 single-deck Inter-City New Generation (ICNG) EMUs after a court rejected a legal challenge from Siemens.

THE Municipality of Amsterdam confirmed on July 8 that the metro North-South Line will open on July 22 2018, 16 years after the start of construction on the troubled project.

MRDH, the regional public transport authority in The Hague and Rotterdam, has directly awarded Rotterdam Electric Tram (RET) a 10-year contract to operate and maintain Rotterdam's tram and metro networks.

CZ Loko, Czech Republic unveiled its prototype EffiLiner 3000 electric locomotive at the Czech Raildays exhibition in Ostrava on June 14.

DUTCH infrastructure manager Prorail confirmed at this week's TEN-T Days conference in Rotterdam that it is planning to trial automated operation of freight trains on the Betuweroute dedicated freight line, which links Rotterdam with the German border near Emmerich.

THE Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Province of Limburg have agreed to jointly fund a €58m project to construct a second track on the Heerlen - Landgraaf line, which is used by Heerlen- Kerkrade regional services and cross-border trains from Heerlen to Herzogenrath in Germany.

RAIL freight in the Netherlands continued to make a strong recovery in 2015, according to statistics published by the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS) on June 21, which show overall volumes increased by 7% compared with 2014 to 42 million tonnes.

TESTING of the first Siemens Vectron for Czech rail freight operator ČD Cargo began on the Czech mainline network on May 31, when the locomotive ran under its own power between Pořičany and Velím on the Prague - Kolín line.

CONTROL of almost all railway stations in the Czech Republic will pass to infrastructure manager SŽDC by August 1 after the steering committee of Czech Railways (ČD) approved the transfer on May 25.