Word: railroads
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...publicity stunts go, this one could have been better timed. Throughout May and June, as waves of strikes disrupted public transport in France and forced the cancelation of hundreds of trains, the French national railroad company SNCF lugged 28 engines and carriages onto the Champs Elysées for an exhibition that promised to "put the whole of Paris under the spell of rail." The exhibits ranged from a replica of an 1829 steam locomotive to the latest version of the high-speed tgv. There were even models of the very commuter trains hardest hit by the strike...
...rail's decline may not be terminal. For one thing, competition is finally being injected into the railroad system. Throughout the 1990s, the European Commission forced state railroads to split track management from management of passenger and freight services in an effort to break their stranglehold and pave the way for private rail operators. The liberalization program culminated earlier this year in a cautious first opening of the freight market to international competition. As of March 15, it became possible for private railroad operators to gain access to 50,000 km of track throughout the E.U. Several companies have already...
...accident took place, critics charged that the company cared more about profits than safety. Following a public outcry, Railtrack was placed in administration in October 2001 with debts of €5 billion. Says Andrew Murray, spokesman for train drivers' union a.s.l.e.f.: "Privatization has been an utter disaster for the railroad industry." Polls show most Britons agree, with a majority calling for the railroad to be renationalized. Last week, Railtrack's successor, Network Rail, disclosed that it is looking for a further 2,000 job cuts - and a whopping €78 billion in investment over the next decade - to get back...
Matthais Raith is showing Europe that railroads can be a growth industry. The 53-year-old native of Kaiserslautern runs a private German railroad company called Rail4Chem, which specializes in transporting hazardous chemicals, including sulfuric acid and paraffin. At a time when most state-owned rail-freight companies are losing money and customers, Raith's sales have almost tripled in the past two years, to €24 million. Rail4Chem was founded by the chemical giant BASF in 1999 after it bought a polyurethane and fertilizer plant in eastern Germany, only to find that state-owned Deutsche Bahn (DB) wasn...
...Ojha plans to pack up and leave once his children finish school, and he's hardly alone. Every day thousands of Biharis cram the state's railroad platforms to join the millions who have already migrated to a new life, becoming the unskilled backbone of industries as diverse as the construction business in Kashmir, the cotton houses of Bombay and the farms of Punjab. Census takers say a third of Champaran's population has taken part in the exodus. Long before his own kidnapping, Salahuddin sent all three of his sons to New Delhi to study and work. "Our society...