FOLLOWING an international tender, northern Rhineland Palatinate regional rail authority ZSPNV-Nord has selected DB Regio as preferred bidder for a contract to operate new regional services between Trier and Luxembourg from December 2019.

PASSENGER numbers on Germany’s main line and urban railway networks continued their upward trend in 2017, according to annual figures published by the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis).

GERMAN Rail (DB) achieved a 5.2% increase in revenue in 2017 to €42.7bn which translated into a 37.1% jump in pre-tax profit to €968m, a 2.8% rise in adjusted Ebitda to €4.93bn, and a 10.6% increase in adjusted Ebit to €2.15bn.

GERMAN Rail (DB) has awarded a contract to British Steel to supply around 20,000 tonnes a year of its new 120m-long rails, with an initial order lasting 21 months.

GERMAN Rail (DB) has inaugurated its first digital interlocking (DSTW) at Annaberg-Buchholz, on the Chemnitz - Cranzahl line in southeastern Germany.

GERMAN Rail (DB) recorded a 37% increase in ridership on its ICE service linking Frankfurt, Cologne and Brussels in 2017, while traffic on the Frankfurt - Cologne - Amsterdam corridor reached a new high.

GERMAN Rail (DB) plans to increase spending on maintaining and modernising the existing 33,200km rail network, as well as investment in new projects, by €800m to a record €9.8bn in 2018.

GERMAN Rail (DB) inaugurated a new €220m carbon-neutral maintenance depot for ICE high-speed trains at Nippes northwest of Cologne on February 23.

GERMAN Rail (DB) has outlined plans for the deployment of ETCS across its rail network, including the full rollout of the technology on the 1450km TEN-T Rhine-Alpine corridor and more than half of its cross-border lines by 2022.

PROPOSALS to significantly reduce the use of diesel traction on regional services in southern Germany were presented to the Bavarian cabinet by the state’s transport minister Mr Joachim Herrmann on January 23.