LONDON Underground (LU) took delivery of two new points and crossings tampers supplied by Matisa, Switzerland, in early December.

OMNITRAX Canada has confirmed that it is selling the Port of Churchill and the associated Hudson Bay Railway Company to an unidentified group of northern-Manitoba-based First Nations for an undisclosed sum.

NORWAY will invest NKr 1bn ($US 76m) over the next two years in a package of measures designed to improve the competitiveness of railfreight, under a programme outlined by infrastructure manager Jernbaneverket on December 17.

SCOTLAND's minister for transport and islands Mr Derek Mackay and ScotRail Alliance managing director Mr Phil Verster announced details of ScotRail's £475m fleet improvement programme at Milngavie station near Glasgow on December 21.

PANAMA Metro has awarded a €145m contract to a consortium including Alstom, Thales, Sofratresa, CIM, and TSO to expand the Panama City metro Line 1 train fleet and upgrade the line's signalling system, power supply, and depot facilities.

POLISH open-access railfreight operator Lotos Kolej signed a contract with Newag in Gdansk on December 23 for the supply and maintenance of five Griffin E4DCU-DP electric locomotives.

IRJ has put together a great line-up of speakers for its International Railway Summit being staged in association with IRITS Events in Vienna on February 17-19 2016. The main theme of the event is the future of rail transport.

BRAZILIAN president Ms Dilma Rousseff attended a ceremony in Salvador on December 22 to open Pirajá station and the final 2.2km phase of the original 11.9km metro Line 1, 12 years after the project was initially scheduled for completion.

PLANS to build a third metro line in the French city of Toulouse have been firmed up with the selection of a 21km core section with 17 stations running in an arc from Montaudran in the southeast via Toulouse Matabiau station and then west to serve the aeronautical zone at Colomiers.

THE German state of Saarland's Ministry of Economy, Labour, Energy and Transport has published a tender in the Official Journal of the European Union for a concession to operate passenger services on the Saar RN electric network for 15 years from December 2019.