GERMAN Rail (DB) has decided to terminate the lease on the fleet of 13 class 605 ICE-TD inter-city DMUs used by Danish State Railways (DSB) on Eurocity services from Hamburg to Copenhagen and Aarhus.

COMMERCIAL services began operating on Marseille's third light rail line on May 30 with the opening of the 1.2km branch to Place Castellane, which extends the network into the south of the city.

RIFT Valley Railways (RVR), the concessionaire operating the 1160km Kenya Uganda Railway, managed to increase freight traffic by 24.3% last year.

BIDDING has opened for the track improvement project on Philippine National Railways (PNR), worth Peso 144.3bn ($US 3.2m), in an attempt to revive and improve Southeast Asia’s oldest railway system.

INECO has announced that it will undertake a feasibility study of a proposed Egyptian high-speed line, linking the cities of Cairo and Luxor. The 600km long corridor would connect the two largest cities of the country, with the aim of strengthening tourism infrastructure.

A consortium of Főmterv and Ecoroad has won the tender to prepare the detailed feasibility study for building the Hungarian section of the Budapest-Belgrade high-speed line. The study will cost Forints 527m ($US 1.8m).

PLANS have been announced by Eng Irit Shperber, director of transport planning in Israel's Transport Ministry, for the construction of a tram-train line between Haifa Lev-Ha-Migrate, Kiryat-Ata, Shefaram, and Nazareth.

DUTCH secretary of state for infrastructure Mrs Wilma Mansveld announced on May 27 that the Dutch government will allocate €88m towards the construction of a new line from Utrecht Central to Leidsche Rijn, a major new housing development west of the city.

THE detailed construction schedule for Sydney's CBD and South East light rail line was released on May 28, with major city centre works on the 12km route scheduled to start on October 23.

ALSTOM has signed an agreement to acquire Balfour Beatty's share of Signalling Solutions Ltd (SSL), a 50-50 joint-venture between Alstom and Balfour Beatty established in 2007 to bid for signalling contracts in Britain and Ireland.