UK: Snowdon Mountain Railway has ordered two battery-diesel hybrid locomotives from Clayton Equipment Ltd, which specialises in the production of bespoke designs for specialist railway, metro, mining and tunnelling applications. The 800 mm gauge railway runs steam and diesel locos up the highest mountain in Wales using the Abt rack and

SWITZERLAND: A company which uses mobile phone data to obtain information on travel demand has raised US$17·5m in a funding round with participants including Deutsche Bahn’s technology investment fund DB Digital Ventures, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Innogy Ventures, LBBW Venture Capital, Liil Ventures and existing investors Atomico and Lakestar. Teralytics was

AUSTRALIA: Loram Maintenance of Way has agreed to purchase Aurizon’s rail grinding business, along with its contracts to serve four customers. ‘Loram recognises substantial opportunities in the Australian rail market’, explained Stephen Mannix, Managing Director of local subsidiary Loram Pty Ltd, when the agreement was announced on August 12. ‘This acquisition

Union calls for action after Caledonian Sleeper overran at EdinburghTHE TSSA union is calling for ‘speedy action’ following the overrun of a Caledonian Sleeper train at Edinburgh almost two weeks ago. The train ran 650m past its intended stopping point before it could be brought to a stand, on 1

FRANCE: Geismar has supplied an automated carbide rail sawing and drilling machine for SNCF’s rail centre of excellence at Saulon in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, the only workshop in France with a production line dedicated to short rails. The machine can be used to undertake precise cutting and drilling operations on rails between 3

AUSTRALIA: The Victoria state government has approved the first package of civil works to upgrade the 39·5 km Sunbury suburban line, which forms the electrified suburban section of the Melbourne – Bendigo main line. The upgrading will pave the way for enhanced services following completion of the Metro Tunnel project in 2025.

EUROPE: Czech open access operator RegioJet has announced plans to launch a long-distance passenger service on the Praha – Wien – Budapest route from June 2020. There would be two trains each way per day, operated as extensions of the Praha – Brno – Wien services which have been running

AFRICA: A bilateral agreement for the modernisation of the Abidjan – Ouagadougou – Kaya route and the construction of an extension to manganese deposits at Tambao near the borders of Niger and Mali was signed by the presents of Côte d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso at  the Eight Summit Conference of

AN inquiry has been launched by the government after widespread power cuts brought many trains to a stand, particularly in the London area. Tyne & Wear Metro was also disrupted by the widespread outages, on Friday afternoon.The problems were caused by the failure of two generators according to National Grid,

More Caledonian Sleeper problems leave passengers strandedANOTHER failure of a Caledonian Sleeper train left passengers stranded at Preston on Friday morning, and they were told that they would have to pay for their journeys onward to London. Virgin declined to allow sleeper tickets to be used on its services because