GERMANY'S Federal Railway Authority (EBA) has finally approved the fleet of Siemens Velaro-D (class 407) ICEs ordered by German Rail (DB) for use on the German network, two years after they were originally due to enter service.

THE latest SCI Rail Business Index regarding the current and expected business environment, based on a survey of top managers from around 100 representative companies from the global rail industry, reveals a cautiously optimistic outlook for 2014.

THE DUTCH house of representatives launched a parliamentary investigation commission on December 19 into the collapse of Fyra high-speed services between the Netherlands and Belgium and the subsequent cancellation of the contract for AnsaldoBreda V250 trains.

THE Spanish Government last week approved the splitting of Adif into two separate bodies in order to avoid the infrastructure manager's spiralling debt from being included in the national debt, in accordance with recent changes to the European System of National and Regional Accounts (ESA 2010).

CHINA Railway Investment Corporation (CRIC), the tendering unit of China Railways Corporation (CRC), has placed orders with subsidiaries of China Northern Rolling Stock Corporation (CNR) and China Southern Rolling Stock Corporation (CSR) for a total of 258 high-speed trains.

GERMAN Rail's (DB) long-distance passenger division, DB Fernverkehr, has issued a call for tenders to fit European Train Control System (ETCS) to its ICE1 fleet of high-speed trains.

THE British government has revealed proposals to sell its stake in Eurostar International Limited (EIL), the parent company of Euostar, and London & Continental Railways (LCR) as part of the Treasury's National Infrastructure Plan, which was published on December 4.

CHINA added another 287km to its high-speed network on December 1 with the launch of commercial services on the new line between Tianjin and Qinhuangdao in Hebei province.

THE International Union of Railways (UIC) and Britain's Railway Safety & Standards Board (RSSB) signed a memorandum of cooperation at the World Congress on Railway Research (WCRR) in Sydney on November 28 to share railway research knowledge through RSSB's Spark website.