URUGUAY’s Ministry of Transport and public works has awarded Comsa, Spain, with a €94m contract to modernise the 180km between Piedra Sola -Salto Grande line.

NETHERLANDS Railways (NS) will introduce a high-frequency service on the Amsterdam - Eindhoven corridor and step up train frequency on other routes in December 2017.

JI-QING High-speed Railway Company, China, has awarded a €50m contract to Vossloh Fastening Systems China (VFSC) for rail fastenings for the high-speed line from Qingdao to Jinan City, a section of the 700km connection from Qingdao on the east coast with Taiyuan, southwest of Beijing.

FIRST vice-president of Russian Railways (RZD), Mr Alexander Misharin, and Serbia’s senior deputy prime minister and minister of construction, transport and infrastructure, Ms Zorana Mihajlovic, attended a ceremony on July 15 at Vreoci station to mark the start of reconstruction of the 77.6km Resnik – Valjevo line in Serbia.

THE European Commission announced on July 12 that it has approved €475m in European Structural and Investment (ESI) funding for the continuation of eight major projects to improve railway infrastructure in Poland.

CHINESE engineers have completed construction of a 15,989m-long double-track tunnel on the new Xi'an - Chengdu high-speed line which is due to open in late 2017.

FOLLOWING the cancellation of a tender for switches and crossings, Israel Railways (IR) has decided to invite prospective suppliers to attend face-to-face meetings to assess the tender documents.

AFTER being out of action for over four years, Peru's only international railway, which connects the southern town of Tacna with Arica in northern Chile, restarted operations on June 1.

Gautrain, South Africa's first standard-gauge railway, has confounded many of its critics by cutting journey times in the Pretoria and Johannesburg area and attracting a loyal ridership. Plans are now being drawn up to extend the network to cope with Johannesburg's rapidly-expanding population, as Paul Ash reports.

Kenya is on course to complete a new Chinese-funded 472km standard-gauge railway line linking Mombasa with Nairobi in the second half of 2017. Shem Oirere reports from Nairobi on progress so far and assesses the project's prospects for success.