BANGLADESH Railway (BR) started work on the Padma Rail Link project on July 3 after signing a $US 2.6bn loan with Chinese Exim Bank for the project on April 27.

NORTH Hessen Transport Authority (NVV) has announced plans to upgrade the RegioTram tram-train network in and around the city of Kassel.

GERMAN Rail (DB), Siemens and the city of Hamburg have signed an agreement to develop a fully automated S-Bahn line in Hamburg by 2021, in time for the World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) in October 2021.

A 6.5km extension to Madrid Metro Line 11 from Plaza Elíptica north to Conde de Casal on Line 6, announced by the city's governing council on June 3, is set to expand the 292km network to more than 300km for the first time.

FRENCH National Railways (SNCF) has released details of its plans to more than triple the size of Gare du Nord, Paris’ busiest station, by 2023 in time for the Olympic Games which will be staged in the French capital in 2024.

ALSTOM’s Coradia iLint hydrogen fuel cell passenger train has been granted approval by the German Federal Railway Authority (EBA) for commercial operation in Germany.

THE Brazilian state of Ceará has awarded Spanish company Sacyr Engineering and Infrastructure and Brazilian construction company Ferrera Guedes a contract worth Reais 1.47bn ($US 382m) to build Phase 1 of the Eastern Line of the Fortaleza Metro over four years.

TEST operations have begun on the Hanoi metro Line 2A between Cat Linh and Ha Dong in the Vietnam capital, with the line connected to the national power grid at the beginning of July.

ALSTOM has unveiled the first of 23 Citadis X05 LRVs which will run on the three lines in Caen, France. The LRVs were ordered in November 2016 with the first deliveries due in October 2018 and entry into commercial service scheduled for September 2019.

ALSTOM has been awarded a 15-year contract by Metro Trains Sydney (MTS) for the maintenance of rolling stock and signalling on the 36km Sydney Metro Northwest Line, which is currently under construction and due to open in the first half of 2019.