FRENCH National Railways (SNCF) has awarded a Euros 350 million contract to Corus Rail to supply rails for four years initially, with an option to extend the contract by another two years.

THE first light rail vehicles for Bergen's new light rail network arrived in the Norwegian city on December 9. Stadler Pankow is supplying 12 Variobahn low-floor LRVs, with an option for four additional vehicles. The second of the 32.2m-long vehicles will follow in February, with the remainder arriving at 3-4 week intervals until the last is delivered next September.

Alstom has secured a Euros 16.5 million contract with Spain's Ministry of Transport for a signalling system on a 25km stretch of the Atlantic high speed mainline between Vigo and Portela.

SIEMENS will equip the first metro line in Chongqing, China with its Trainguard MT signalling and control system. Scheduled to enter public service in 2011, the first of six proposed metro lines for China's 20th largest city will be 36km long and include 23 underground, at-grade and elevated stations. Siemens declined to release the value of the contract.

KAZAKHSTAN Railways (KTZ) has awarded a $US 100 million contract to Alcatel-Lucent to modernise its telecommunications network to bring it up to international standards.

NEXUS, the authority responsible for Newcastle's metro, has selected German Rail (DB) subsidiary DB Regio as its preferred bidder for a concession to operate the 78km Tyne & Wear network.

PRESIDENT Dmitry Medvedev of Russia has ordered more stringent security measures on the rail network following the bomb attack on November 27 against the Moscow - St Petersburg Nevsky Express in which 26 people were killed and 92 injured. The president says the order involves "not only social, economic and security issues, but also sets a tight deadline for investigating terror attacks." Medvedev says the investigation into the explosion is a "matter of national importance" and "all necessary resources" must be put into solving the investigation.

MACAU'S Bureau for Transport Infrastructure (GIT) has launched an international tender covering infrastructure systems and rolling stock for the first phase of the city's automatic light metro network. The turnkey contract covers the supply of trains together with the design and build elements of a project to adapt the Sai Van bridge for the metro. The contract includes options for up to 10 years' train maintenance and two additional batches of trains.

DANISH State Railways (DSB) has been awarded its fourth contract to operate regional services in Sweden. Subsidiary DSB Småland will operate Krösatågen services on five routes around Jönköping and Nässjö for a period of eight years from next December, with annual passenger volume of around 2.1 million passenger-km.

RUSSIAN Railways (RZD) reported a year-on-year fall in freight traffic by 16.9% to 1 billion tonnes between January and November 2009, but experienced a 5.3% year-on-year freight traffic increase for November 2009 to 95.7 million tonnes, a positive sign that the Russian economy is beginning to recover from the global economic downturn.