NETHERLANDS Railways (NS) announced on March 1 that it is planning to extend the midlife refurbishment of its VIRM double-deck EMUs to a further 45 trains at a cost of €502m.

SIEMENS officially handed over the first class 1293 Vectron electric locomotive for Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) at a ceremony at Praterstern station in Vienna on March 5.

SIEMENS has signed an agreement to lease a 27-hectare site in Goole, northern England, to build a plant to manufacture and commission trains provided investment conditions are met and it wins sufficient orders for new trains.

ALGERIA’s minister of public works Mr Abdelghani Zalene officially opened the new Algiers Agha station for Algerian National Railways (SNTF) long-distance services on March 2, at an event which also marked the launch of SNTF’s new fleet of Alstom Coradia Polyvalent inter-city trains.

SIEMENS unveiled its new Smartron locomotive concept for the German rail freight market on March 1, pledging to simplify the procurement of new traction with an offer based on “one version, one contract, one price.”

STATE support for Via Rail’s Fleet Renewal Program was confirmed on February 27 with the publication of the Canadian government’s 2018 budget, which allocates funds to Transport Canada for the procurement of new trains for the Windsor - Quebec City corridor.

THE first completed metro cars for the Jakarta MRT project arrived at the Japanese port of Toyohashi on March 1 in readiness for shippment to Indonesia.

WEST Midlands Trains, Britain, has signed an agreement with Vivarail to supply three of its class 230 D-Trains for operation on the Bletchley - Bedford Marston Vale Line by the end of this year.

ROLLS-ROYCE has won a contract from Knoxville Locomotive Works (KLW), United States, to supply two types of EPA Tier-4-compliant MTU diesel engines to power switching locomotives.

DYNAMIC testing of the first Alstom Prima T8 double-unit electric locomotive for Indian Railways (IR) has begun at the Electric Locomotive Factory at Madhepura in the Indian state of Bihar.