RENFE started commercial service in the Olmedo - Zamora section of the Madrid - Galicia high - speed line on December 17 with a single return service which will cut travel time for the 232km Madrid - Zamora trip by 22 minutes to 1h 33min.

INDIA will adopt Japanese Shinkansen technology for the country's first high-speed line under a memorandum of understanding signed on December 12 in Delhi in the presence of India's Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Mr Shinzo Abe.

GERMAN chancellor Mrs Angela Merkel and minister for transport and digital infrastructure Mr Alexander Dobrindt joined German Rail (DB) CEO Dr Rüdiger Grube Thuringia state minister-president Mr Bodo Ramelow and his Saxon counterpart Mr Stanislaw Tillich to inaugurate the 123km €2.74bn Erfurt - Leipzig/Halle high-speed line (VDE 8.2) on December 9.

THE 1776km high-speed line from Lanzhou to Urumqi in the Xinjiang region of northwest China must rank alongside the Qinghai Tibet Railway as one China's greatest engineering achievements of recent years. The 31-station line crosses the Gobi desert and the Qilian Mountains, reaching a summit of 3607m above sea level in the Qilianshan No 2 Tunnel, making it the world's highest high-speed line.

EAST Japan Railway Company (JR East) and Hokkaido Railway Company (JR Hokkaido) announced journey times on December 3 for high-speed services operating via the Hokkaido Shinkansen, which will open on March 26.

SIMULTANEOUS ceremonies were held in Taiwan on December 1 to officially open three new intermediate stations on the 345km Taipei - Kaohsiung high-speed line.

BRITAIN's chancellor of the exchequer Mr George Osborne confirmed on November 30 that the opening of the 69km Lichfield - Crewe section of High Speed 2 (HS2) will be brought forward by six years to extend the benefits of the new line to north-west England and Scotland sooner than originally planned.

TRENITALIA's latest-generation high-speed train the Frecciarossa 1000 (ETR 1000) set a new Italian rail speed record on November 26, when one of the eight-car sets reached 389km/h during nocturnal testing on the Milan - Turin high-speed line.

CHINA's National Development and Reform Commission gave the go-ahead on November 20 for the construction of a 618km high-speed line linking Xi'an with Yinchuan in the western autonomous region of Ningxia, which is not currently linked to the high-speed network.