Bulgaria: The country's Ministry of Transport and Communications will change some specifications and qualification criteria following the cancellation of three of the four tenders announced in May, which attracted virtually no interest from global manufacturers.
Russia: Oleg Toni, deputy general director of Russian Railways, announced plans to introduce an automatic train operation system in rolling stock under development.
Brief overview of key events and news in the rail rolling stock markets.
Netherlands: All of the bidders selected by the passenger transport operator refused to submit a bid, leading Arriva to cancel the tender.
Indonesia: The two-car train was produced this year by the local manufacturer PT Inka for the Madiun State Polytechnic university, which offers a railway engineering programme.
UK: The leasing company Eversholt Rail and the engineering company Transport Design International, TDI, have signed a contract for three such pre-production vehicles for trial operation.
Indonesia: Two trains with a carbody of stainless steel have entered into commercial operation between Jakarta and Surakarta.
China: A prototype of the two-car Super-autonomous Rail Rapid Transit was shown at the China International Rail Transit & Equipment Manufacturing Industry Exposition.
The company recently announced that it had produced its 150,000th 3D-printed part. Aurelien Fussel, head of additive manufacturing at Alstom, who has been leading development in this field for eight years, talked about the possibilities and prospects of 3D printing.
