RENFE started commercial service in the Olmedo - Zamora section of the Madrid - Galicia high - speed line on December 17 with a single return service which will cut travel time for the 232km Madrid - Zamora trip by 22 minutes to 1h 33min.

CHINA Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC) has awarded Hollysys Automation Technologies a Yuan 483.8m ($US 74.9m) contract to supply Automatic Train Protection (ATP) equipment for 179 high-speed trains being built for China Railway Corporation.

INDIA will adopt Japanese Shinkansen technology for the country's first high-speed line under a memorandum of understanding signed on December 12 in Delhi in the presence of India's Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Mr Shinzo Abe.

GERMAN chancellor Mrs Angela Merkel and minister for transport and digital infrastructure Mr Alexander Dobrindt joined German Rail (DB) CEO Dr Rüdiger Grube Thuringia state minister-president Mr Bodo Ramelow and his Saxon counterpart Mr Stanislaw Tillich to inaugurate the 123km €2.74bn Erfurt - Leipzig/Halle high-speed line (VDE 8.2) on December 9.

THE 1776km high-speed line from Lanzhou to Urumqi in the Xinjiang region of northwest China must rank alongside the Qinghai Tibet Railway as one China's greatest engineering achievements of recent years. The 31-station line crosses the Gobi desert and the Qilian Mountains, reaching a summit of 3607m above sea level in the Qilianshan No 2 Tunnel, making it the world's highest high-speed line.

GERMAN Rail's (DB) next generation high-speed train was officially christened ICE 4 by DB CEO Dr Rüdiger Grube and German federal minister for transport and digital infrastructure Mr Alexander Dobrindt, in a ceremony at Berlin Südkreuz station on December 4.

EAST Japan Railway Company (JR East) and Hokkaido Railway Company (JR Hokkaido) announced journey times on December 3 for high-speed services operating via the Hokkaido Shinkansen, which will open on March 26.

SIMULTANEOUS ceremonies were held in Taiwan on December 1 to officially open three new intermediate stations on the 345km Taipei - Kaohsiung high-speed line.

BRITAIN's chancellor of the exchequer Mr George Osborne confirmed on November 30 that the opening of the 69km Lichfield - Crewe section of High Speed 2 (HS2) will be brought forward by six years to extend the benefits of the new line to north-west England and Scotland sooner than originally planned.

THE construction of a high-speed line encircling Hainan reached a key milestone on November 26 when the first test train ran on the 344km Western High-Speed Ring Railway, completing the 652km loop around the Chinese island.