1/2006

With the start of the 2006 timetable, and amid a major publicity campaign, ČD launched its new SuperCity service between Praha and Ostrava using the Class 680 Pendolini - the first large-scale commercial use of these prestigious new trains. We take up this "never-ending saga" of stumbling-blocks from where we left off in R 5/05.

The EN57 is the classic Polish EMU. Over 32 years, from 1962 to 1994, no fewer than 1,412 examples left the Pafawag works in Wroclaw for service with PKP, finding their way to all electrified parts of the network. A further 40 were exported to Yugoslavia.

It is now nearly half a decade since Virgin CrossCountry's 220001 Maiden Voyager carried its first fare-paying passengers. In R 2/03 (pp. 52 - 55) we looked at some of the teething troubles being experienced by the fleet of 78 200 km/h Class 220 and 221 DMUs. This article examines in greater detail the history of their construction, testing and entry into service.

Stadler Pankow, which has factories in Berlin and Velten, forms part of the Stadler Rail Group, based in Switzerland. Since 2001 the Group has been expanding its range of products from DMUs to embrace EMUs, trams, metro trains, and locomotive-hauled carriages. Together with mechanical design the Group now also undertakes electrical engineering and bogie design. That means Pankow can take on full responsibility for vehicle production, from start to finish.

At InnoTrans 2004 ČMKS Lokomotivy exhibited its prototype Bo diesel shunter, 709.401, promoted under the brand name Effishunter. Late in 2003 the company, working together with Inekon Group, had received an order from Železnice Srbije, the State railway operator in Serbia, for ten similar machines, which ŽS planned to designate Class 621.1. The first of the batch was exhibited early in October 2005 at the International Engineering Industry trade fair in Brno, where it won a gold medal in the transport exhibits category, and the new locomotives are now being delivered.

The Dutch are building their first high speed railway. From April 2007 it will be possible to travel at up to 300 km/h direct from Amsterdam, Schiphol and Rotterdam to Antwerpen, Brussels, and Paris, with connections en route onto other parts of the expanding European high speed rail network. HSL-Zuid stands for Hoge Snelheidslijn-Zuid - the southern high speed line; others have been projected. Here we take a detailed look at the history of its construction, and at its most outstanding civil engineering features.