CHINA Railway Siyuan Survey and Design Group (CRSSD) is conducting a preliminary study of a planned 1754km high-speed line in India linking Delhi, Bhopal, Nagpur, Hyderabad and Chennai which it hopes to complete by August.

THE merger between China's two largest train builders, CNR and CSR, has been approved by China's Securities Regulatory Commission and the Ministry of Commerce, and according to Xinhua the process could be completed by June.

THE chairman of Tibet Autonomous Region Mr Losang Jamcan has told Nepalese president Mr Ram Baran Yadav that the Chinese government plans to extend the Tibet Railway to the Neapalese border within five years.

NANJING inaugurated the latest addition to its rapidly-expanding metro network on April 1 with the start of trial public operation on Line 3.

SAUDI Railways Organisation (SRO) has awarded a Riyals 160.2m ($US 42.7m) contract to China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC) for the second phase of a project to upgrade the track on the freight line linking Riyadh, Harad and Dammam.

REVENUE at MTR Corporation grew 3.7% in 2014 to $HK 40.16bn ($US 5.17bn), with its Hong Kong operations accounting for $HK 27.53bn of this figure, an 8.1% increase. Underlying profits from MTR's global businesses was also up by an impressive 7.9% to $HK 8.02bn, while total profit, after investment property revaluation, increased by 19.8% to $HK 15.61bn.

THE merger of China's largest rolling stock manufacturers CNR and CSR has moved a step forward after the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC) granted in-principle approval of plans to amalgamate the two companies.

TRAMS are set to return to Shanghai city centre for the first time in more than 40 years as part of a three-year development plan for publically-owned land along the city's riverfront, which was unveiled by the municipal government on February 25.

Labelled the endless city, China's Pearl River Delta comprises an almost continuous conurbation. As Hans-Ulrich Riedel explains, a vast network of metro, light rail and high-speed lines is being developed to serve the 45 million people who live in the region.

The extraordinary growth of China's high-speed network has been one of the defining rail trends of recent years, but the pace of expansion has made charting traffic development a challenging process. Gerald Ollivier, Richard Bullock, Yin Jing, Jitendra Sondhri and Nanyan Zhou from the World Bank's Beijing office uncover usage trends from the initial years of operation and consider how traffic might develop in the future.