Cargo Sous Terrain is an initiative that intends to build tunnels below Switzerland for the purpose of automatically transporting goods with a speed of ca. 30 km/h. At this moment, the project is still in its early steps and has not yet found financial sources or any approval by the government bodies. The idea is … Continue reading Why Cargo Sous Terrain (CST) is not the right approach

I recently read some articles about the "future" or what we expect to achieve by the implementation of the 4th industrial revolution. Some writer consider that there are 9 technologies that are part of that revolution: Big Data and Analytics Augmented Reality Autonomous Robots Simulation Horizontal and vertical system integration The industrial internet of things … Continue reading Industry 4.0 in Railway Maintenance

Recently I had the chance to go through a whole bunch of maintenance and service contracts in particular for the transport industry. As a non-lawyer, you spend quite some significant time reading these kind of papers even though they are most of the time not very exciting and the content even less surprising. Funnily, I … Continue reading Maintenance and Service contracts in the Railway Industry

I just stumbled over the presentation on Slide Share that Alistair Dormer has apparently given on October 5th for middle-east clients. Looking briefly at the Slides I reflected a bit on what has happened for Hitachi Rail in 2015, here are some thoughts: Hitachi poised to grow overseas The Hitachi group with over 300’000 employees … Continue reading Hitachi and Ansaldo – Hitachi Rail is now truly European but where to go next?

In early September 2015 I tried to use the Sitarail trains traveling from Burkina Faso to Cote d'Ivoire. While there are now 2-3 trains per week in each direction we finally opted for taking the bus as we did not want to travel during the night without any chance to see something. If you intend … Continue reading Ouagadougou-Abidjan Railway Line

Indian Railways is probably the largest railway organization in the world when it comes to staff but also passengers as it transports commuters all over the country. The system as it is operated today has however suffered from underfunding, driven by a lack of revenue by Indian Railways. The high importance of the railways on … Continue reading Indian Railways – projects start to gain traction

The last 10 years and the upcoming 10 years show a strong investment in the African continent’s railways. While many of the railway links date back to the pre-independence of the countries, most of them have or will undergo rehabilitation and expansion driven by the export demand for resources. This is in particular the case … Continue reading Railways in Africa – driven by resources and shaping the future economies

Whilst American companies are showing continuously that freight on rails can be operated quite successfully, many European train operating companies (TOC) still struggle to create a positive bottom line from that business. In the early 2000s many European TOCs where quite successful on course to reach solid EBIT, this has changed after the financial crisis … Continue reading Challenges for European rail bound freight traffic