5/2011

From 7 to 10 September 2011 the VNIIZhT’s experimental test circuit at Scherbinka, near Moskva, hosted the Third International Railway Salon - EXPO 1520, the only specialised exhibition event dedicated to the railway industry in the former Soviet Union and ex-Soviet countries, which have 1,520 mm rail networks. On the following pages we take a look at the most outstanding exhibits.

This year Ukraine celebrates the tenth anniversary of construction of its own passenger carriages. The first were outshopped in August 2001 from Kryukovsky vagonostroitelny zavod (KVSZ), the carriage and wagon works situated in Kremenchug, about 350 km southeast of Ky’jiv. There were 34 of these vehicles, and they currently are used to form the „Stolichny express“ trains operating at a top speed of 140 km/h on the Ky’jiv to Kharkov and Ky’jiv to Dnepropetrovsk routes.

On 1 October 2011 the new Polish passenger operator Koleje Śląskie (KŚ), founded by Województwo Śląskie (Śląsk provincial council) in April 2010, started up local services within the Śląsk industrial conurbation.

In 2005 the Slovakian rail infrastructure manager ŽSR (Železnice Slovenskej republiky) started installation of ETCS Level 1 on a 89 km stretch of the Bratislava-Rača to Nové Mesto nad Váhom main line, and this historic pilot project was commissioned on 12 December 2010. The first sections of the line were equipped with ETCS infrastructure supplied by Siemens, while several of operator ZSSK’s locomotives have had on-board ETCS installed, supplied by Thales.

One of relatively few the European projects for a frequent open access passenger operation started up on 26 September 2011 between Praha and industrial area of Ostrava in the northeast Czech Republic, trains calling at certain intermediate stations en route. On this busy rail corridor, passengers can now choose between ČD services, including Pendolinos, and RegioJet’s bright yellow trains.

In the winter of 2007 De Lijn undertook, using the operator’s own measuring equipment, various small scale and short term measurements, which indicate that the winter heating of the interiors of company’s new „Hermelijn“ type low floor trams costs more than running them from point A to point B!