SWEDEN's national passenger operator, SJ, will take delivery this weekend of the last of 20 class X55 four-car emus from Bombardier.

THE European Commission (EC) is to initiate infringement proceedings in the European Court of Justice against Poland for the failure to fully implement EU legislation on interoperability.

SNCF Geodis subsidiary Viia successfully operated a test train on Switzerland's Gotthard line on October 24 as part of its Transhelvetica project to carry semi-trailers with a 4m corner height across the Alps.

NTV, Italy's open-access high-speed operator, has announced that its founding president, Mr Luca di Montezemolo, has decided to step down. He is being replaced by Dr Antonello Perricone who joins NTV from the publishing world.

THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank (EIB) has agreed to provide Polish infrastructure manager PKP PLK with two loans worth a total of €165m to upgrade two sections of line.

FOLLOWING a Europe-wide tender, DB Regio has won Lot 1 of the contract to operate the Eifel-Westerwald-Sieg network contract in western Germany comprising three routes and covering 2.3 million train-km per year.

A CEREMONY was held in Basle on October 22 to mark the opening of the city's second railway bridge across the river Rhine.

BRITAIN's Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) and the Rail Research UK Association (RRUKA) have approved proposals from four British universities for studies into reducing the whole-life cost of rolling stock.

THE COST of electrifying the double-track line between München and Lindau is set to increase by more than a third, according to revised estimates, while the completion date of the project has also been put back from 2017 to 2019.

ABELLIO Rail NRW, a subsidiary of Netherlands Railways (NS), has won a major 15-year contract to operate regional services in eastern Germany.