THE Japanese government has offered to fund the construction of India's first high-speed line linking Mumbai with Ahmedabad provided 30% of the rolling stock is supplied by Japanese companies.

EUROSTAR has finally completed the refurbishment of the first train from its existing fleet of class 373 trains (dubbed e300 by Eurostar) and the train will re-enter service shortly.

SHAREHOLDERS in Italian open-access operator NTV agreed at a meeting in Rome on July 17 to increase the company's capital by €100m.

CHINA Railway Investment Corporation (CRIC), the procurement arm of China Railway Corporation (CRC), published six tenders on July 17 for a total of 351 high-speed trains with an estimated combined value of around $US 10.6bn.

INDONESIA's president Mr Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has urged that construction of a high-speed link between Jakarta and Bandung start "next month" during a cabinet meeting on high-speed rail systems for Indonesia held on July 13.

Bombardier Sifang Transportation is readying three new high-speed trains for the Chinese market. David Briginshaw looks at the top-of-the-range 350km/h train now under delivery, a 250km/h EMU which is being tested, and a prototype sleeping-car train.

Dr Masanobu Iida, director of the environmental engineering division of Japan's Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI), explains the challenges of mitigating aerodynamic effects and noise as the maximum speed of high-speed trains increases, and achievements since the country's first Shinkansen opened in 1964.

With a key report from the Japan International Cooperation Agency into the Mumbai - Ahmedabad high-speed project expected this month, Raghav Thakur, looks at the prospects for this project and the country's high-speed ambitions.

Work on the first phase of Britain's £42.6bn HS2 project to build a 338km high-speed line from London via Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds is set to begin two years from now. As David Briginshaw reports, this was confirmed last month by Britain's newly-elected government.

TESTING started this month of two 350km/h prototype China Standard EMUs designed by Chinese engineers.