AFTER four years of construction, the Lisea consortium celebrated a milestone for the Sud Europ Atlantique high-speed line on July 25, when high-speed testing began on the central section of the 302km route from Tours to Bordeaux.

MALAYSIAN prime minister Mr Najib Razak and his Singaporean counterpart Mr Lee Hsien Loong witnessed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in Putrajaya, Malaysia, on July 19 setting out a timeline and implementation structure for the Kuala Lumpur - Singapore high-speed line.

CONSOLIDATED Land and Rail Australia (Clara), a private Australian consortium, has launched an ambitious bid to build a high-speed rail network linking Melbourne and Sydney, which it says will not require any government funding, but instead will be financed by value capture from increases in adjacent local land values.

JI-QING High-speed Railway Company, China, has awarded a €50m contract to Vossloh Fastening Systems China (VFSC) for rail fastenings for the high-speed line from Qingdao to Jinan City, a section of the 700km connection from Qingdao on the east coast with Taiyuan, southwest of Beijing.

SPAIN's high-speed rail infrastructure manager Adif-AV registered a net loss of €361.3m in 2015, a 67% increase on the previous year and 28% over its own fiscal year budget, according to an official income statement presented to the Spanish government.

ITALFERR, the engineering subsidiary of Italian State Railways (FS), published a tender notice in the Official Journal of the European Union on July 9 for a contract to design and build the first section of the €6.2bn Naples - Bari high-speed line.

PLANS for a high-speed rail link connecting the eastern coastal city of Sokcho with Korea's capital Seoul have been given the green light after a preliminary feasibility study carried out by government-run think-tank, the Korea Development Institute concluded that the project is viable.

CHINESE engineers have completed construction of a 15,989m-long double-track tunnel on the new Xi'an - Chengdu high-speed line which is due to open in late 2017.

This month the prime ministers of Malaysia and Singapore are expected to sign a key agreement on the implementation of the Kuala Lumpur - Singapore high-speed line. Keith Barrow looks at how momentum - and international interest - is building behind this flagship project.

PROPOSALS for major alterations to the route of the second phase of the high-speed network linking London with central and northern England were unveiled on July 7 by the chairman of HS2 Ltd Sir David Higgins.