INDIA: The 13 km Sahibabad to New Ashok Nagar extension of the Delhi – Ghaziabad – Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System line was opened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 5.

UK: Contracts have been awarded for a mid-life refresh of the Class 376 electric multiple-units used on Southeastern’s London suburban services since 2004.

RUSSIA: Agreements on the organisational structure, financing and risk allocation for the Moskva – St Petersburg high speed rail project were signed on December 23.

The European Union’s Recovery & Resilience Fund is the latest opportunity to fund much-needed improvements in the Romanian rail network, but the looming deadline for project completion is proving tough to meet. Toma Bačić explains.

UK: Train operator owing company association Rail Partners said ‘the bar for new open access applications is being made harder to clear’, after Secretary of State for Transport Heidi Alexander set out her expectations for how applications to run open access services should be considered as the rail industry is ...

USA: New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority has approved the operation of battery-diesel hybrid locomotives ordered from Wabtec to haul maintenance trains on the Subway network.

SWEDEN: The country’s heaviest freight trains outside the iron ore sector are being used to test digital automatic couplers in real-world conditions.

UK: The Office of Rail & Road has directed high speed line concessionaire HS1 Ltd to lower the access charges for passenger and freight trains on the route from London to the Channel Tunnel.

EUROPE: The national passenger train operators of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have launched co-ordinated services to make it more practical to travel between Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn by rail.