CAF announced on February 6 that it has been awarded a contract by Paris Transport Authority (RATP) for the design and manufacturing of dual-mode electric locomotives.

DIRECT Rail Services (DRS) announced on February 3 that it has received the first of 10 class 88 locomotives from Stadler Rail at its Kingmoor Depot in Carlisle, Britain.

SIEMENS has concluded two further contracts for Vectron electric locomotives with customers in Austria and Switzerland.

NAMIBIA’s national railway TransNamib moved an important step closer to alleviating its chronic locomotive shortage on January 13, when a batch of six GE Transportation C23EMP diesel-electric locomotives arrived at the port of Walvis Bay.

THE first batch of 15 GE Transportation C30 ACi Evolution Series diesel-electric locomotives for Angolan National Railways (INCFA) arrived in Angola on January 11 after completing their sea voyage from the United States.

UNION Pacific (UP) announced on January 23 that it intends to spend around $US 3.1bn through its 2017 capital programme, subject to approval by the Class 1 railway’s board of directors.

RUMO is now Brazil and Latin America’s largest rail freight company. Operating a network of over 12,000km covering four rail concessions in Mato Grosso, São Paulo, Paraná, and southwestern Brazil, the railway’s fleet of 1000 locomotives and 25,000 wagons primarily transports agricultural products from the heartlands of the country to port for export.

BOMBARDIER announced on June 20 that it will provide six Traxx MS multi-system electric locomotives to Captrain Germany for cross-border freight transport in Europe, mainly in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

SIEMENS has emerged as preferred bidder for a contract to supply up to 200 electric freight locomotives to Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB).

WHEN it comes to a network business like rail, a small improvement in efficiency can have massive operational impacts. According to GE Transportation, the US rail freight industry experiences 500,000 delays a year and one in four trains suffer unplanned downtime. By increasing the average speed of each train by 1.6km/h, and reducing the amount of time trains are stationary by 1%, the savings to the industry could be as high as $US 4.7bn.