VALENCIAN Government Railways (FGV) has awarded Stadler Rail Valencia a €43.3m contract to supply six bi-mode (diesel and electric) multiple units.

BOMBARDIER has rolled out the 200th VLocity DMU from its Dandenong factory for Public Transport Victoria for operation on regional services in the Australian state of Victoria.

MONTENEGRO’s rail infrastructure manager ZICG has awarded AŽD Praha a €6.1m contract to resignal the main station in the capital Podgorica.

ITALY’s minister of transport and infrastructure Mr Graziano Delrio has approved funding of €214m for the purchase of 22 mainline trains, five regional trains and seven CAF Urbos LRVs for Calabria.

BRITAIN’s infrastructure manager Network Rail (NR) has awarded a £29m contract to Atkins to resignal 42km of lines linking Norwich, Yarmouth and Lowestoft in eastern England.

THE proposal to build a transcontinental railway linking Brazil and Peru - the Bi-oceanic Railway - has hit a stumbling block on the choice of the best route through Peru.

GERMAN open-access operator Locomore is set to resume services on the Stuttgart - Berlin route on August 24 after Czech open-access operator Leo Express agreed to take over the operations of the insolvent company.

THE Karlsruhe - Basle main line in southwest Germany, one of Europe’s key rail freight arteries, has been closed since August 12 following a major earth movement caused by groundwater entering the construction site of the new 4.27km tunnel being built under Rastatt.

EGYPTIAN prime minister Mr Sherif Ismail attended a ceremony in Cairo on August 15 to witness the signing of a $US 1.24bn contract between Egypt’s National Authority for Tunnels (NAT) and a consortium of China’s Avic International and China Railway Group for the construction of an interurban light rail line to the east of Cairo.

INDIA’s Commissioner of Metro Railway Safety (CMRS) Mr Satish Kumar Pandey gave the go-ahead for commercial operation of the first metro line in Lucknow on August 14 following a successful safety inspection on the initial 8.4km section of the north-south line between Transport Nagar and Charbagh.