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Rail Articles

Positive progress for railways in the Western Balkans

25 May 2016 | By Nedim Begović, Transport Planning Manager at the South East Europe Transport Observatory (SEETO)

Nedim Begović, Transport Planning Manager at the South East Europe Transport Observatory (SEETO) writes about the latest investments of the Core Regional Transport Network, underlining that although the last three years have seen a positive trend towards rail infrastructure investment, a lot more is still needed to increase the competitiveness…

Train Data: TIS – A European success story

25 May 2016 | By Ann Billiau, Harald Reisinger, Josef Stahl and Florian Sandauer - all RailNetEurope (RNE)

Promoting greater railway interoperability is a topic still high on the agenda of the industry. A web-based application from RailNetEurope (RNE) that supports international train management has just made a leap forward with a mobile version. For Global Railway Review, RNE colleagues Ann Billiau, Harald Reisinger, Josef Stahl and Florian…

The challenges of integrating the South American railways

25 May 2016 | By Guilherme Quintella, Chairman of UIC Latin America

Integrating the infrastructure of different transportation modes is now an irreversible trend. However 150 years ago, when the implementation of the railways in South America began, nobody envisioned the benefits that integrated planning would bring to the development and the economy of South American countries...

Level Crossings and the Lorries of Doom

19 May 2016 | By Peter van der Mark

‘Ah yes, level crossings! Those locations where ill-disciplined road users interact in fascinating ways with railways…’ Regular blogger Peter Van de Mark looks at the hazards of level crossings.

Catenary free operation of trams – topology and operational concept

15 May 2016 | By

For tram networks that operate via overhead lines, difficult building conditions and harming the cityscape can lead to unwanted high construction costs and lack of acceptance from citizens and town planners. To avoid these, the use of a tram with energy storage that enables catenary free operation (CFO) could be…

IT2Rail: Transforming Real-Time Passenger Information and ticketing

11 May 2016 | By

Today’s rail transport in Europe is not attractive enough to customers, especially for the new ‘connected’ generation. In particular, rail lacks multi-modal and door-to-door travel offers and there is limited interoperability between booking systems. A central objective of Shift2Rail (a Joint Undertaking – a form of Public-Private Partnership within Horizon…

Smartcards are about to get smarter at Govia Thameslink Railway

11 May 2016 | By

Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) is Britain’s biggest rail franchise: 326 million passenger journeys are made across its network with Southern, Gatwick Express, Thameslink and Great Northern every year. In November 2015, CEO Charles Horton explained how the story of GTR is a story of delivery: new train fleets, new services,…

An optimistic future for contactless ticketing

10 May 2016 | By

As the UK Transport Minister Claire Perry announced the demise of the ‘tango ticket’ by 2018, Principal Policy Adviser Briony Krikorian from The UK Cards Association considers how their Contactless Transit Project could help the UK rail industry achieve this vision.

The continual success of Hull Trains

5 May 2016 | By First Hull Trains

First Hull Trains explains how it has remained one of the UK’s top operators for reliability and passenger service resulting in a ten-year track access contract until 2029…

German research centre encourages the European railway industry

21 April 2016 | By Dr. Joachim Winter

In Global Railway Review Issue 3 2016 published in May, Dr. Joachim Winter – Senior Scientist/Project Manager of ‘Next Generation Train (NGT)’ at the German Aerospace Center – will present the high-speed passenger train project Aeroliner3000, winner of the DfT/RSSB’s competition ‘Tomorrow’s Train Design Today’. Here, Dr. Winter gives a…