FRANCE's deputy minister of transport, Mr Frédéric Cuvillier, has instructed French National Railways (SNCF) and French Rail Network (RFF) to implement three recommendations to improve track safety made by the Office of Land Transport Accident Inquiries (BEA-TT).

FRENCH National Railways (SNCF) has awarded Tata Steel a contract to supply more than 200,000 tonnes of rail for use on conventional and high-speed lines across France.

SPEAKING at a track seminar organised by Plasser & Theurer in London recently, Mr Wolfgang Nemetz of ÖBB Infrastructure, explained that ÖBB's efficiency programme, which was launched in 2008, is aimed at cutting new construction, renewal and maintenance infrastructure costs by €1256m or 118% by 2018. 

THIS MONTH sees major changes in the organisation of Belgium's railway industry with the implementation of reforms that will abolish Belgian National Railways (SNCB) Holding and transfer all of its assets, liabilities, and activities to the state-owned train operator, SNCB, and infrastructure manager Infrabel.

CONSTRUCTION is expected to begin this month of a 220km railway in southern Laos from Savannakhet on the Thai border to Lao Bao on the border with Vietnam following a groundbreaking ceremony on December 18.

RUSSIAN Railways International, a subsidiary of Russian Railways (RZD), will start in January to mobilise workers and equipment to enable work to begin in March to upgrade 370km of lines in Serbia and supply diesel trains to Serbian Railways.

GOLDLINQ, the consortium building the first light rail line in Gold Coast, Australia, confirmed on December 20 that it had laid the final section of track on the 13km link between Gold Coast University Hospital and Broadbeach.

THE Spanish Government last week approved the splitting of Adif into two separate bodies in order to avoid the infrastructure manager's spiralling debt from being included in the national debt, in accordance with recent changes to the European System of National and Regional Accounts (ESA 2010).

THE European Commission (EC) has adopted the seven-year €1bn Shift2Rail public-private partnership (PPP) research project designed to increase passenger and freight traffic within the European Union.

GERMAN Rail (DB) management board member for infrastructure and services Dr Volker Kefer announced on December 12 that DB will spend around €4.6bn on infrastructure renewal and investment next year, with maintenance expenditure set to increase by around €200m.