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Jane’s World Railways 1996-97 by James Abbott
Janes World Railways 1996-97 by James Abbott
Hard Cover
798 pages
Copyright 1996
CONTENTS
Alphabetical list of advertisers [10]
How to use this book [17]
Foreword [19]
New entries in this edition [25]
Entries deleted from this edition [27]
Manufacturers
Locomotives 3
Powered passenger vehicles 39
Diesel engines, transmission and fuelling systems 68
Electric traction equipment 88
Non-powered passenger vehicles 96
Passenger coach equipment 108
Freight vehicles 128
Brakes and drawgear 150
Bogies and suspensions, wheels and axles 166
Bearings 180
Simulation and training systems 186
Signalling and telecommunications systems 190
Passenger information systems 212
Automatic fare systems and station equipment 218
Fixed electrification equipment230
Permanent way equipment 238
Freight yard and terminal equipment 276
Workshop, repair and maintenance equipment284
Private Freight Wagon Leasing Companies 297
Operators of International Rail Services in Europe305
International Railway Associations and Agencies 309
Consultancy Services 316
Railway Systems
Afghanistan 342
Albania 342
Algeria 342
Angola345
Argentina 346
Armenia353
Australia 353
Austria 372
Azerbaijan 379
Bangladesh 379
Belarus 381
Belgium 382
Benin 387
Bolivia 387
Bosnia-Hercegovina389
Botswana 389
Brazil 391
Bulgaria 404
Burkina Faso 406
Cameroon 406
Canada407
Chile 421
China, People's Republic 425
Colombia430
Congo431
Costa Rica 432
Croatia 432
Cuba 434
Czech Republic 435
Denmark440
Dominican Republic 447
Ecuador 447
Egypt 448
El Salvador 450
Eritrea 450
Estonia 451
Ethiopia 452
Finland 452
France456
Gabon 471
Georgia 472
Germany472
Ghana 488
Greece 489
Guatemala 492
Guinea 492
Honduras 493
Hong Kong493
Hungary495
India 498
Indonesia 509
Iran 512
Iraq 514
Ireland 515
Israel 517
Italy 519
Ivory Coast 533
Jamaica 534
Japan 535
Jordan 564
Kampuchea 566
Kazakhstan 566
Kenya 567
Kirgizia 569
Korea, North 569
Korea, South 570
Latvia 572
Lebanon574
Liberia 574
Libya 574
Lithuania 575
Luxembourg 576
Macedonia 578
Madagascar 579
Malawi 580
Malaysia 581
Mali 584
Mauritania 584
Mexico 585
Moldova 588
Mongolia 589
Morocco 590
Mozambique 592
Myanmar (Burma) 593
Namibia 594
Nepal 595
Netherlands 596
New Zealand 601
Nigeria604
Norway605
Pakistan 608
Panama 610
Paraguay 611
Peru 612
Philippines 614
Poland 615
Portugal 618
Puerto Rico623
Romania 623
Russia 625
Saudi Arabia 631
Senegal 632
Slovakia633
Slovenia636
South Africa 637
Spain 642
Sri Lanka658
Sudan 660
Swaziland 661
Sweden 661
Switzerland 670
Syria 689
Tadjikistan 689
Taiwan690
Tanzania 692
Thailand 694
Togo 696
Tunisia 697
Turkey 698
Turkmenistan 701
Uganda 702
Ukraine 703
United Kingdom704
United States of America 724
Uruguay 775
Uzbekistan 776
Venezuela 776
Vietnam 778
Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) 779
Zaire 780
Zambia 781
Zimbabwe 783
Addenda 785
Index 789
FOREWORD
EUROPE's railways are in trouble. Deficits are rife, while traffic is slipping away. So far as freight goes, in western Europe over the period 1970-94 rail freight decreased from 283 to 220 billion tonne-km. While the decline of heavy industry which has been rail's principal customer has played a part in this, that has not been the whole story - for over this period the freight market expanded by nearly 70 per cent and road freight increased by 150 per cent.
In July 1996, the European Commission pointed out in a press release: `The average freight train travels at 14 km/h; on a typical journey it is likely to idle in sidings for an entire afternoon waiting for border checks, and lose at least half an hour at each frontier changing crews. It is perhaps then hardly surprising that on current trends rail freight risks becoming obsolete in many market sectors within the next decade.' The remedies suggested in a White Paper produced by Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock include strengthening of Directive 91/440 (which gives access rights to railway infrastructure) so as to encourage on-rail competition, and the creation of `rail freight freeways' across the Continent on which cargo trains would be speeded over frontiers.
The spectacular turnaround of the US freight railways, following the Staggers Act deregulation in 1981, provides a model. By the end of the 1970s, US railroads were run down and decrepit; freedom from regulation spurred capital investment, encouraged a fresh commercial approach and resulted in a reinvigorated industry. But can this experience be translated across the Atlantic? Certainly the distances in North America are of a different order, with the 3,000 km West Coast-Chicago and 4,500 km coast-to-coast journeys regularly undertaken by landbridge container traffic not replicated in western Europe. Much of Europe's industry is congregated in a compact area around the Rhine and Ruhr, with distances so short that in many instances it is difficult for the railways to compete with lorries.
However, while weakening rail's hand in Europe, the facts of geography do not vitiate the Commission's approach. The aims of bringing market forces to bear and making cross-border transport as seamless for trains as it is for lorries retain their relevance.
Underlining the need to search for new ideas has been the unhappy experience with freight services through the Channel Tunnel. Here, a new chapter opened for the railways with the establishment of direct links between Continental and British industry in 1994. The long distances made feasible by the Tunnel, it was thought, would open up new markets for the railways. An effort was made with the new services to set up structures which would sidestep some of the deficiencies that had become apparent on mainland Europe: prices were set with reference to lorry rates for throughout hauls (rather than by just adding up what each railway authority would charge for transit of its territory) and Railfreight Distribution, the arm of British Rail handling the new services, decided it would wholesale complete trains and leave the retailing of container slots to other, specialist companies.
Sadly, the new services have so far not lived up to their promise. While for the British railway authorities the trains were an exciting new departure, for the French, Italians and others Channel Tunnel services were just one part of a portfolio of international services - and often a much smaller part than the long-established flows. So when drivers and locomotives were scarce, it was often the UK services which lost out, giving them a reputation for unreliability in their early months. Over-elaborate customs and security measures (since simplified) did not help, and then industrial unrest on the Continent in the closing months of 1995 confirmed prejudices about the railways held by many shippers. But perhaps most important, and a factor which few had foreseen, was the fierce price war that opened up between the ferries and the Eurotunnel lorry shuttle across the English Channel, making throughout lorry journeys ludicrously cheap compared to the rail alternative.
The upshot of all this has been that rail freight carryings through the Tunnel are scarcely a third of the way towards the six million tonnes a year anticipated before the Tunnel opened. In its 1995-96 annual report, the British Railways Board revealed that it had written off its investment in Railfreight Distribution, having lost all hope of ever getting its money back. Provision was made in the accounts for million: million for minimum usage charge payments to Eurotunnel for sending freight trains through the Channel Tunnel over the next 10 years, and million for the new locomotives, wagons and terminals acquired for Continental services.
This experience has made the European Commission's proposed reforms seem doubly relevant. They seek to build on Directive 91/ 440, which has already begun to have an effect. Container shipping companies have contracted with NS Cargo and other railway operators, for a couple of years now, to run their own trains on a handful of routes out of Rotterdam - a development which has spurred Intercontainer, the international operator owned collectively by Europe's railway administrations which has traditionally run such services, to sharpen its marketing and improve its service offering. But the most significant development in this arena occurred in 1996 with the formation of NDX, a joint venture between CSX of the US and the German and Dutch railway authorities, DB AG and NS. Besides running the biggest railroad in the east of the USA, CSX is also parent of the Sea-Land container shipping concern, which has a major presence in the North Atlantic and other oceans. Its CSX Inter-modal subsidiary runs a North America-wide rail-based container distribution system for Sea-Land, using both CSX's tracks and those of unrelated railroads. This has expanded beyond its maritime origins to embrace many domestic (all-land) flows, and it seems that NDX is being set up to achieve much the same in Europe.
Now that it is seeking to swallow Conrail, CSX is becoming a global transport provider of truly awesome proportions. On a different scale, but nevertheless impressive, is Wisconsin Central Transportation which, with its acquisitions of the former state railways of New Zealand and the bulk freight operations of British Rail, has evolved from a successful US regional railroad into an international company. With its British base, WCT is said to have Continental ambitions which could lead to the intriguing possibility of an alliance with SNCF of France. Such a joint venture could give NDX a run for its money in exploiting Directive 91/440, running freight trains on the principal traffic lanes in Europe and rendering national boundaries irrelevant.
***
On the passenger side, Europe's railways again have no room for complacency. The mode is in danger of becoming marginalised; to make the point, the European Commission says that the average German takes the train but twice a year. While the showpiece high-speed lines have increased patronage on the prime routes, elsewhere the railway has been failing. For example, in France over the 1988-94 period, the Trains Grande Vitesse passenger-km figure rose by 10 billion, but this was more than offset by a fall in passenger-km in the Grandes Lignes sector, down 15 billion during the same period.
As in the freight arena, some international flows are being managed by separate companies: Cisalpino between Italy and Switzerland and the sleeper company DACH Hotelzug in the German-speaking countries spring to mind (although the latter's financial travails suggest that this path is not always strewn with roses). But most passenger traffic is national in character, and so this remedy is of limited relevance. The Commission has views on what should be done: a distancing of railway administrations from government and the introduction of a more commercial approach were the chief thrusts of the 1996 White Paper on railways. There is merit in this direction, but the European ship of state is slow to turn: policy adopted by the individual national governments is still pre-eminent.
In the national capitals, approaches differ. The Germans are pouring money into the railways in the name of national cohesion, as they see the rail network as a vital element in knitting together the former West and East German states and helping the latter to catch up with the former. A virtual wholesale renewal of the rolling stock fleet is taking place and there are heavy infrastructure investments too. In France, little was resolved in confrontations with the trade unions at the end of 1995 and the railways' deep-rooted problems persist, leading policy makers to stumble from one crisis to the next. Consequently, the decision in October 1996 to put the Lignes Grande Vitesse programme on hold was unsurprising, and in conceding that tilting trains on conventional routes might be a more cost-effective way forward, the French were only coming to the same conclusion that the Swiss and other nations had reached earlier.
Virtually all the European railways are considering some sort of structural change with, for instance, the Dutch and Swedes introducing the competition between operators which is advocated by the Commission. But it is only the British who have opted for root and branch structural reform, with the changes engendered by the 1993 Railways Act now starting to be seen on the ground. Ironically, it was British Rail, with its steady passenger patronage and strong hold on costs, that was perhaps the least likely candidate among the European railways for the dismemberment which it has undergone.
Three years ago on this page a World Bank economist was quoted as saying that the British had jumped off a cliff without a parachute in the type of privatisation that had been adopted for their railway system. So far, there have been no major broken bones, with the fall being cushioned by taxpayers' money. Around million has been spent on the restructuring - or more than twice that if redundancy costs at British Rail are taken into account. Also, the annual subsidy during the transition years has been high, almost doubling with the demise of BR to around billion a year due to the need to build in profit margins in the fragmented industry.
So far as the railway service seen by the passenger goes, there is little to show for the massive expenditure and the vast upheaval that Britain's railways have undergone over the past three years: things are going on much the same as before. There have been no huge improvements, but neither have there been significant degradations in service. For instance, the innovative high-frequency services between major provincial centres instituted by British Rail in the 1980s remain intact, and the industry's safety record has continued to improve despite the massive institutional change.There may have been some deterioration in timekeeping and other performance indicators as managers have been distracted by privatisation, but overall the doom-merchants' predictions have so far failed to materialise.
Just which way the finances of the industry will now go is a matter of some debate. Today's very high level of subsidy is set to decline now the railways are in private ownership, but due to the huge costs of setting up the new system Oxford University's Professor Bill Bradshaw has estimated that over a 10 year period the privatised railway will have cost the British taxpayer over billion more than it would have done had it been left in BR hands.
Advocates of the restructuring claim that Professor Bradshaw is unduly pessimistic and that by 2010 Britain will have a subsidy-free railway. Certainly, the franchisees which have taken over BR services have signed up to very ambitious subsidy reduction programmes. But with a total of 25 train operating companies going out to franchise, it is likely that some franchisees will have been overoptimistic - and how the new system will cope with a financial failure has yet to be seen. Much has been made of the fact that with railway services being run under contract for periods of seven or more years, the railways in Britain will be removed from the vagaries of successive public spending rounds; however, it is unclear how the Treasury will react if faced with a demand for more money in the middle of a franchise term due to financial failure on the part of a franchisee. Clearly, the British parachute ride is not yet over, and this country seems likely to be of interest to observers of the railway scene for some years to come.
The British are perhaps not being wilfully perverse in choosing the extremely complicated and expensive method of railway privatisation that they have, for there are no convincing models in other advanced industrial countries for transferring publicly run railway passenger services into the private sector. Even Japan, with its fantastically heavy passenger loads, has managed only partial flotation of JR East, with sale of JR West having been repeatedly deferred and only begun in earnest in late 1996. JR East, remember, has dense commuter services in the Tokyo conurbation, where three out of every four trips are made by train.
The fundamentals for the passenger railway business continue to look bright: increasing road congestion, concern over the effect of road systems on the environment, political and public goodwill for the railways - all give grounds for optimism for the future. The search continues for the optimum structure which would allow the industry to translate those underlying favourable factors into rising passenger and revenue figures.
* * *
Consolidation continues in the world's railway manufacturing industry, with the formation of Adtranz by the merging of the rail activities of the Swiss-Swedish firm ABB with those of the AEG unit of Daimler-Benz of Germany marked in this edition of Jane's World Railways. Europe's rail manufacturing is now increasingly dominated by the Big Three: Adtranz, Franco-British GEC ALSTHOM and Siemens of Germany (with the Canadian firm Bombardier coming in fourth).
Signs are now apparent that the process is stretching across the Atlantic. The US Big Two have agreements with European majors: General Motors has long-standing links with Siemens, and now General Electric has joined Adtranz in the production of a lightweight diesel locomotive and is collaborating with Deutz of Germany in diesel engine manufacture.
This co-operation is bearing fruit in the spread of best practice. In the 1980s, GM and Siemens ploughed a lonely furrow in the American market with AC traction, but the attractions of this technology for starting heavy trains with fewer locomotives are now recognised by the major railroads (although the effects on track capacity of lower running speeds have also to be weighed in the balance). Similarly, for decades many American railroads were wedded to two-stroke diesel engines from GM, while the Europeans espoused four-stroke - but now GM is producing a four-stroke. Know-how is also flowing in an easterly direction. The economy and reliability North America offers through long production runs of standard diesels, is to bring benefits to one of the major European railways for the first time, with the re-equipping of the English, Welsh & Scottish Railway locomotive fleet with machines from General Motors. Furthermore GE's expertise in diesels is recognised in the joint venture with Adtranz.
Japan, although dominant in the world's auto industry, has not figured so prominently in the global railway market. In Europe, the principal market for passenger stock, it has had some success in peripheral markets such as Ireland, but has failed to penetrate the major markets - even in those countries such as Britain which have been open to competition and have not sought to protect their own industries. In North America, Japanese firms have won orders for light rail and commuter stock, but this represents only a small proportion of the world market. In the reverse direction, the substantial Japanese market has been supplied almost exclusively by domestic firms, although some American and European companies, such as Cummins with its diesel multiple-unit engines, have been successful in selling parts.
The consolidation of the European manufacturing industry is will happen in the next year or so when the bulge of orders, placed with national industries in 1992 to avoid the European Union's single market requirements, begins to peter out - we are likely to be reminded again that there are too many factories chasing too few orders. Meanwhile in North America, the market has lived with the duopoly of locomotive manufacturers for many years. The interesting question there will increasingly be one of monopsony (purchaser monopoly), as the creation of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, Union Pacific-Southern Pacific and CSX- or Norfolk Southern-Conrail mega systems will mean that a supplier that fails to win an order from one of these systems will have few other places to turn for salvation.
***
The production of Jane's World Railways is a team effort, and I would like to thank everybody involved in that effort. First, I must acknowledge the work of my assistant Robert Preston, without whose unstinting efforts the book could not have been produced. Correspondents spread around the world have helped with information on various countries: Chris Bushell, Ian Button, Tom Ellett, John Gough, K K Gupta, David Haydock, Tony Heywood, Michal M, Andy Phipps, F Gerald Rawling, Bryan Stone, Brian Webber, John Westwood, Barry Worthington and others. Thanks also to those people in railway systems and manufacturing organisations who have written to us with new information needed to update their entries; such letters are always welcome. For the maps, the hard work in origination put in by Samuel Rachdi of the Fahrplancenter in Winterthur, Switzerland, is acknowledged, as is that of Barrie Compton in the UK for preparing them as computer graphics. The assistance of those freelance photographers who have provided pictures is also much appreciated. Last but not least, let me thank the Editorial, Database and Production teams at the Jane's offices in Coulsdon for their hard work and professionalism.
James Abbott, Editor London, October 1996
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