THE board of Adif, Spain's infrastructure manager, has placed a €54m contract with Siemens Rail Automation and Thales to equip the Pajares bypass with Spain's Asfa ATP system, ERTMS and associated signalling and telecommunications equipment.

TURKISH State Railways (TCDD) has awarded a €10m contract to Thales to modernise the signalling and telecommunications at Eskisehir station.

THALES has been chosen by JR East to design Japan's first communications-based train control system (CBTC), following a competition between Thales and Alstom.

THE European Commission (EC) has adopted the seven-year €1bn Shift2Rail public-private partnership (PPP) research project designed to increase passenger and freight traffic within the European Union.

CONSTRUCTION of Line 1 of the Panama metro is now 92% complete and test running is underway.

MTR Corporation has awarded Thales a contract to supply and install Communications-Based Train Control (CBTC) for Hong Kong's $HK 64.9bn ($US 8.36bn) Shatin – Central Link (SCL).

TURKISH State Railways (TCDD) has awarded a contract to Huawei, China, to install GSM-R telecommunications on the 51km suburban line linking Izmir Alsancak with Tepekoy.

TTRANS Sistemas de Transportes, a member of the VLT RMBS consortium building the 15km light rail line in the Brazilian city of Santos, has selected Thales to supply signalling and communications systems for the project.

PASSENGER Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) has awarded a consortium of Thales and local partner Maziya the Rand 1.86bn ($US 186m) Western Cape New Signalling contract, which is a key part of Prasa's National New Signalling Programme.

THALES Spain has signed a Euros 109m turnkey contract to modernise and renew signalling systems on the Cairo-Alexandria line, in a project which will double capacity and raise the maximum line speed from 140km/h to 160km/h.