£100m train test complex plans for Neath valley backed

Rob Jones spoke as Neath Port Talbot’s cabinet backed a joint venture to set up a Global Centre of Rail Excellence. Currently manufacturers have to send trains across Europe for testing before they come back to the UK for service. The Nant Helen opencast mine near Ystradgynlais is the preferred site for the scheme, which Powys council…

Bullet trains stay on track

(China’s high-speed rail network carries 4 million passengers every day, connecting some of the country’s top draws) China has built the world’s longest high-speed rail network and is continuing to expand it rapidly. With a total length of 29,000 km by the end of 2018, high-speed rail now covers 30 of the country’s 34 provincial-level…

Planning starts for new Central European high-speed railway system

BUDAPEST, May 7 (Xinhua) — Planning has started for a new high-speed railway system linking the Visegrad Group (V4) countries (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) together, according to local media on Tuesday. “In two years, the feasibility study on the high-speed railway linking Budapest-Bratislava-Brno-Warsaw will be completed,” Hungarian daily Magyar Nemzet reported here,…

Vocational school in Thailand boosts modern skills with help from China

(Students practice driving a high-speed train in a simulator at Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Technical College in Ayutthaya, Thailand, in February. YANG ZHOU/XINHUA)   “Now the train moves forward,” said 20-year-old Arthitaya Sapkum, who was attentively looking at a screen that simulates the locomotive window of a high-speed train, while her classmates were operating the control…

Holiday train ticketing mess spawns rules

Conductors may allow passengers to extend trips only when not overbooked The country’s railway operator said it will no longer allow train conductors to sell extended tickets to passengers who are already on board because the practice created overcrowding problems over the May Day holiday last week and was unfair to passengers who had booked…

High-speed trains to go even faster

High-speed trains to go even faster Workers check Fuxing bullet trains in the assembly workshop of CRRC Qingdao Sifang Co in Qingdao, Shandong province, in June.  Operator taps cutting-edge tech to improve passengers’ experience China’s high-speed railway system is setting more ambitious goals for domestically developed Fuxing bullet trains, Lu Dongfu, head of the national…

Lai backs co-location as ‘only way’

Former security chief demolishes arguments against arrangement for joint boundary control at West Kowloon Co-location of boundary control facilities by Hong Kong and mainland authorities inside the West Kowloon Station is the “right and only” way to connect the city to the nation’s high-speed rail network, says Lai Tung-kwok. The former Hong Kong Special Administrative…