INDIAN Railways (IR) plans in mid-April to re-float a global tender for a Rs 27bn ($US 415.5m) contract to manufacture 15 inter-city EMUs in collaboration with a foreign partner, after the Stadler-Medha consortium emerged as the sole qualified bidder after technical bids were opened for the original tender on February 6.

MYHSR, which is responsible for building the Malaysian portion of the 350km Kuala Lumpur - Singapore high-speed line, has selected two consortia as project delivery partners to design and implement the civil works for the project.

THE European Commission (EC) has approved the acquisition of Italian open-access high-speed operator Italo-NTV by the US-based Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) III equity fund.

DOGUS Construction Group, which is building the 10km light rail line between Eminönü and Alibeyköy on the west bank of the Golden Horn in Istanbul, has selected Alstom to provide its APS ground-power-supply solution for the entirety of the project.

CAMBODIA moved a step closer to the restoration of rail links between its capital Phnom Penh and Bangkok on April 4 with the launch of passenger services on the 48km section of the Northern Line between Sisophon and Poipet on the border with Thailand.

PASSENGER numbers on Germany’s main line and urban railway networks continued their upward trend in 2017, according to annual figures published by the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis).

SCI Verkehr’s annual assessment of the rail business climate, based on a survey of around 100 representative companies from the global railway industry, says the outlook is more positive in the first quarter of this year compared with the first quarters of both 2016 and 2017 (see graph below).

OPERATIONAL testing began on the Riyadh metro network on April 4, when a two-car Alstom Metropolis train for the Purple Line (Line 6) ran under its own power.

TRAMS have returned to the streets of El Paso, Texas, after an a 44-year absence with the start of dynamic testing on the $US 97m El Paso Streetcar line.

THE first Nippon Sharyo metro cars for the initial phase of the Jakarta MRT project were unloaded at the Indonesian port of Tanjung Priok on the evening of April 4 after completing their sea voyage from Japan.