TUNNELLING has been completed on the Lusail light rail project while nearly 20km of the 113km of tunnels required for the Doha metro have been bored, Qatar Rail announced in Doha on April 21.

RAILWAY Interchange 2015 exhibition and conference in Minneapolis, United States, on October 4-7 is already shaping up to be a much larger event than the inaugural show in 2011.

INDONESIAN Railways (PT KAI) and its Railink subsidiary have secured syndicated loans worth a total of Rs 2 trillion ($US 155m) to fund construction of a rail link between central Jakarta and Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.

THE governor of the Brazillian state of São Paulo Mr Geraldo Ackmin officially launched construction on São Paulo metro Line 6 at a ceremony in the north of the city on April 13.

EMILIA Romagna Railways (FER) has shortlisted two bidders for a 15-year contract to operate passenger rail and bus services in the Italian region.

ISTANBUL celebrated the completion of another addition to its metro network on April 18, when Turkey's president Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan took an inaugural trip on Line M6.

THE Finnish city of Tampere has shortlisted two consortia for the next stage of a design-build tender for the city's planned 25km light rail network.

RUSSIA's prime minister Mr Dmitry Medvedev has instructed the minister of transport Mr Maxim Sokolov to remove all obstacles to allow the start of construction of the Russian section of a rail link across the Amur River to China by May 5.

INDIAN Railways (IR) says it is preparing to launch a tender for a fleet of fixed-formation 200km/h trains and will hold a pre-bid conference for prospective suppliers this month.

KAZAKH president Mr Nursultan Nazarbayev inaugurated the southern extension of Almaty metro Line 1 to Moskva on April 18.