Quintus Vosman

A CEREMONY was held at Maschen yard near Hamburg on November 27 to mark the introduction of 835m-long freight trains between Germany and Scandinavia.

IN a landmark ruling, the European Court of Justice has decreed that Austrian infrastructure manager ÖBB Infrastructure acted unlawfully in preventing open-access operator Westbahn from accessing real-time data on the train movements of other operators.

NETHERLANDS Railways (NS) has withdrawn its fleet of newly-refurbished NID inter-city double-deck sets following an incident on November 23 when one of the trains unexpectedly split in service.

SWISS Federal Railways (SBB) has appointed Siemens to equip 230 rail vehicles operated by SBB Passenger, SBB Cargo, RegionAlps, Ferrovienord and SBB Infrastructure with onboard ETCS equipment.

THE long-awaited launch on December 9 of Fyra high-speed services between Amsterdam and Brussels using AnsaldoBreda V250 trains may be delayed.

ROTTERDAM Electric Tram (RET) has sold 44 redundant type T metro sets built by Düwag in 1980-84 to the Turkish city of Bursa, where they will be used on the growing Bursaray light metro network.

BELGIAN National Railways (SNCB) is to cut 193 services when the 2013 timetable year starts on December 9, a move being implemented as part of the operator's financial recovery plan.

THE Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment in cooperation with Dutch railway infrastructure manager Prorail have started planning the construction of a new link between the Betuweroute dedicated freight line and 's-Hertogenbosch.

THE German Federal Ministry for Transport and DB Networks have finalised a financing agreement for the second stage of reconstruction and remodelling at Halle station.

THE European Commission (EC) is to initiate infringement proceedings in the European Court of Justice against Poland for the failure to fully implement EU legislation on interoperability.