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Showing posts with label Moscow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Moscow. Show all posts

Sunday, 4 December 2016

06:37

Moscow – Berlin Talgo starts on December 17

Moscow – Berlin Talgo starts on December 17
EUROPE: Russian Railways is to launch its Moscow – Minsk – Warszawa – Berlin Talgo train service in December, the national railway confirmed on October 28. The first trains will depart from Moscow’s Kursk station on December 17 and from Berlin Ostbahnhof the following day, RZD said. Tickets are now on sale for the service.

Sharing the Strizh (Swift) brand which RZD has adopted for its domestic Talgo trainsets used on the Moscow – Nizhni Novgorod route, Trains 13 and 14 will be operated using gauge-changing Talgo trainsets able to run on 1 520 and 1 435 mm gauge tracks. Passing through a newly-built automatic gauge changer at Brest on the Belarus-Poland border will take around 20 min, compared with the current 2 h stop to change bogies.

Journey time from Moscow to Berlin will be cut by 4 h 45 min to 20 h 14 min, while the eastbound timing of 20 h 35 min will be 5 h 21 min faster than the current service.

RZD says the Talgo service will initially operate twice a week, departing from Moscow at 13.05 on Saturdays and Sundays and arriving in Berlin at 07.19 local time. The return trains will depart from Berlin Ostbahnhof at 18.50 on Sundays and Mondays, reaching Moscow at 17.25 the following day.

RZD’s inter-city subsidiary Federal Passenger Co ordered seven Talgo trainsets in June 2011, at a cost of €100m. The four broad gauge sets entered service on the Moscow – Nizhny Novgorod route in June 2015, and the three gauge-changing sets began test running on the Moscow – Berlin corridor in October 2015.

Designed for operation at up to 200 km/h, the 20-vehicle locomotive-hauled trainsets are formed of 17 passenger coaches, a dining car and two technical cars. Offering a mix of first and second class seats and two-berth sleeping compartments, each train has a total capacity of 414 passengers.

Source:RG
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Saturday, 19 September 2015

08:02

China’s first high-speed railway project in the United States

China’s first high-speed railway project in the United States

A long-discussed high-speed rail project linking Southern California and Las Vegas will be built by a U.S.-China joint venture, Chinese officials said Thursday, though many details about the agreement remained hazy.

Announcement of cooperation on the XpressWest project adjacent to the 15 Freeway comes days ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to the United States. Financial terms of the agreement, and the cost of the project, were not immediately clear.

US HSR
XpressWest, a private venture formerly called DesertXpress, has been under discussion since at least 2007 to form a joint venture with China Railway International USA, which unites the state firms China Railway Group, CRRC, China State Construction Engineering Corporation and China Railway Signal & Communication Corporation.

Chinese officials described the project as a 230-mile train linking Las Vegas and Los Angeles, though XpressWest’s website says the route is planned as 185 miles from Vegas to Victorville, 85 miles northeast of downtown L.A.

XpressWest agreed this month to form a joint venture with China Railway International USA Co. to build and operate the railway, Shu Guozeng, deputy head of the government’s Office of the Central Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs, said at a news conference Thursday, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency. Shu claimed the project could begin construction as early as September 2016.

Representatives of XpressWest did not immediately return requests for comment.

Multiple proposals for a Vegas-to-L.A. train have been discussed over the years, with none coming to fruition because of funding difficulties and other setbacks.

China has built the most extensive high-speed railway network in the world.

It has about 10,000 miles of high-speed rail in operation, and Chinese train makers and railroad builders are eager to expand overseas now that China’s network is somewhat built-out and the country’s domestic economy is slowing.

China Railway International was established this summer by a Chinese consortium led by national railway operator China Railway, the financial publication Caixin reported. Bloomberg News cited a statement from Shu saying the Las Vegas project would “be supported by $100 million in initial capital,” though from which entities was unclear.

“As China’s first high-speed railway project in the United States, the project will be a landmark in overseas investment for the Chinese railway sector and serve as a model of international cooperation,” Yang Zhongmin, chairman of China Railway International, told Xinhua.

According to the XpressWest website, which does not mention any news of a China partnership but does have a version of its website in Chinese, the train is expected to transport passengers between Vegas and Victorville in 80 minutes, with fares set at $89.

Publicity materials state that although the project has adopted an “assemble and manufacture in America” plan, the rolling stock manufacturing base for high-speed trains is “not yet mature.” Therefore, the venture’s backers indicated they intended to partner with some foreign suppliers for the estimated 42 train sets they anticipate needing, with assembly being performed in southern Nevada.

Last October, the Chinese media claimed that the country had become the world leader in developing high-speed rail systems.

The same month, the Russian government signed a memorandum of cooperation on a high-speed railroad with Chinese officials. The purpose of the document is to develop a Moscow-Beijing Eurasian high-speed rail transport corridor.
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