INDIAN Railways (IR) awarded contracts on September 24 to carry out feasibility studies into the construction of three high-speed lines as part of the country's proposed Golden Quadrilateral network.

ALSTOM and GE Transportation have emerged as lowest-price bidders for contracts with a combined value of around Rs 23bn ($US 348m) to establish two new locomotive assembly plants in the Indian state of Bihar.

INDIAN Railways (IR) has received bids from seven parties for a contract worth Rs 25bn ($US 379m) to supply 315 main line EMUs divided into 20 trains of 16 and 20-car sets, which will deployed on IR's existing broad-gauge Rajdhani and Shatabdi express services.

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.

INDIAN Railways (IR) has launched a tender for a contract worth around Rs 25bn (390m) to supply 315 EMU cars for inter-city services.

INDIAN Railways' Rs 240bn ($US 4.5bn) project to construct a 63km elevated rail corridor linking Churchgate to Virar in Mumbai has been abandoned following a lack of response from private parties.

INDIAN Railways (IR) says it is preparing to launch a tender for a fleet of fixed-formation 200km/h trains and will hold a pre-bid conference for prospective suppliers this month.

The Indian government has approved record funding with the promise of more to come to modernise Indian Railways and provide desperately-needed extra capacity. However, as Raghav Thakur reports, IR has a poor record for implementing projects and past attempts to reform the railway have come to nothing. 

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.