Sam Hewitt

THE Tyne and Wear Metro’s control room in South Gosforth, Newcastle, will receive a £12million upgrade. It features new computerised signalling control that should make operations more efficient. The work is part of the Metro’s £350million ‘all change’ modernisation programme. The new Rail Traffic Management System (RTMS) is a computerised-signalling control system, supplied by Derby-based…

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TRAM services around Birmingham and Wolverhampton were rebranded as West Midlands Metro from June 24 after being taken over by Midland Metro Limited (MML), a subsidiary of the West Midlands Combined Authority. The move allows Transport for West Midlands, part of the WMCA, to put future profits back into the network. MML has also lowered…

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TWO decades as chairman of the Rail Freight Group has seen Lord Berkeley honoured with the surprise eponymous naming of GBRf Class 66 No. 66755. Retiring from his position later in the year, the sterling work of The RM columnist to “enhance and support open access, modal shift and the future growth of rail freight”…

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THE first two of 25 six-car Class 717 EMUs for Great Northern services from Moorgate arrived in the UK on July 11 and were delivered to Ferme Park depot. Construction of the units is on-going at Siemens Krefeld factory, and at the beginning of July, further sets were under test at the Wildenrath track. The…

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THE first replacement unit for Northern Rail ‘Pacers’ – two-car Class 195 No. 195001 – arrived in the UK on June 25. The set is the first of 25 two- and 30 three-car trains ordered by Northern and being built by CAF in Spain on its ‘Civity’ platform. Bodyshells are fabricated in Zaragoza, with final…

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FIVE new Siemens SC-44 ‘Charger’ locos have been ordered to operate ‘Coaster’ commuter rail services between San Diego and Oceanside, in southern California. The new locos will be built in the Siemens factory in Sacramento, California, and delivered by June 2021 at a cost of $37million. The order is being funded by the Californian state…

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TWO former New Zealand Railways (NZR) tank locomotives will be given a new lease of life with brand new welded boilers replacing the originals. After discussions with Australian preservation groups, which had used new welded boilers, it was decided to buy two boilers as the joint cost was lower than buying one at a time.…

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CUBA’s railways have been badly affected by severe weather several times in recent months. During the second week of September 2017 the most powerful Atlantic storm in a decade, Hurricane Irma, left a trail of destruction across the Caribbean and the southern USA. The north coast of the island of Cuba was particularly hard hit…

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UK-BASED Railway Touring Company operated the first passenger train to be hauled by Slovak broad gauge (1,520mm) Class 125 electric locos in July. The train was formed of a unique preserved ex-Czechoslovak Railways (ČSD) variable gauge (1435/1520mm) axle two-car DMU, owned by a preservation group based in Haniska, near the Slovakian city of Košice. It…

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