KAZAKH president Mr Nursultan Nazarbayev inaugurated the southern extension of Almaty metro Line 1 to Moskva on April 18.

SPAIN added a further section to its already extensive high-speed network on April 18, with the opening of a new section of the Atlantic Corridor between Santiago de Compostela and Vigo, in Galicia. The A Coruña – Santiago section opened in 2009 and was electrified in 2011.

BRITISH franchise operator South West Trains (SWT) has announced that it has awarded a consortium of British rolling stock engineering consultancy ESG and Danish IT and engineering company Cubris a "multi-million pound" contract to deliver the GreenSpeed Driver Advisory system on 249 of its trains.

GERMANY's Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) has approved a €65m grant to help fund the construction of a second metre-gauge tram line in the city of Ulm.

A three-year €120m project to improve the door-to-door travel experience for rail passengers was unveiled on April 16 by Mrs Barbara Dalibard CEO of French National Railways (SNCF) passenger division SNCF Voyages.

THE first of 27 three-car DMUs being supplied by CNR for commuter services on the metre-gauge Belgrano Sur network in Buenos Aires rolled off the production line at the CNR Tianjin plant in eastern China on April 15.

THE mayor of Braunschweig Mr Ulrich Markurth and Braunschweig Transport CEO Mr Jörg Reincke launched the German city's new fleet of 18 Solaris Tramino low-floor LRVs on April 13, when the first vehicles entered passenger service on the 1100mm-gauge tram network.

WASHINGTON Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) celebrated the launch of its new Kawasaki 7000 series trains on April 14, when the first train entered passenger service on the Metrorail Blue Line.

Interactive screens embedded into train windows have long been painted as a vision of the future of onboard information services for rail passengers. But with trials of a new system developed by Israeli company Oran Safety Glass now underway, they could soon be standard features on trains around the world, as Kevin Smith discovers.

OSTRAVA has become the first city in the Czech Republic to gain a dedicated airport rail link with the inauguration of a new connection to Leoš Janáček International Airport on April 13.