China-Europe intermodal freight is a major success story of recent years. Kevin Smith considers the factors driving continuing development and the challenges that trans-Eurasian services face to realise their full potential.

TANZANIA’s president Mr John Magufuli officially launched construction on April 12 of the first phase of the country’s 2561km standard-gauge railway project which will eventually link the Indian Ocean port of Dar es Salaam with Mwanza on Lake Victoria and Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika, as well as neighbouring Rwanda and Burundi.

CBH Group, Australia, has awarded a contract to Wi-Tronix, United States, to equip its fleet of 25 diesel-electric locomotives, which are used to haul grain trains, with Wi-Nostix, a predictive fault diagnostics and monitoring system.

COAL services operated by Australian rail freight operator Aurizon have suffered severe disruption following heavy rain and flooding caused by Cyclone Debbie which made landfall on the Queensland coast during the last week of March.

TRANSMASHHOLDING (TMH), Russia, says it increased turnover by 22% in 2016 to Roubles 120bn ($US 2bn) thanks mainly to strong growth in the sale of passenger vehicles.

ISRAEL Railways (IR) made a profit of Shekels 77m ($US 21m) from current activities in 2016, a 10% increase on its Shekels 70m profit in 2015.

IN a major policy reform initiative, India’s cabinet approved a proposal on April 5 to establish an independent rail regulator, which will be responsible for setting Indian Railways’ (IR) freight and passenger tariffs and ensuring a level playing field for stakeholders and investors.

THE German rail industry achieved a 5.2% increase in exports in 2016 to €6.1bn taking exports to 52% of total sales of €11.8bn. However, domestic sales fell by 12% to €5.7bn compared with 2015.

SOUTH Africa’s president Mr Jacob Zuma unveiled on April 4 the first diesel locomotive to be designed, engineered and manufactured by Transnet Engineering, the engineering and manufacturing division of Transnet.