FOREX LOSSES

CHINA RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION, CHINA RAILWAY GRP POST FOREX LOSSES.

China Railway Construction reported an exchange loss of 320 million yuan (US$46.82 million) from July to September, instead of the rumored 600 million yuan.

China Railway Group reported 1.939 billion yuan of exchange loss, or 0.09 yuan per share on its remaining foriegn exchange proceeds raised from the H-share issue by September 30, mainly caused by appreciation of the Australian dollar.

The two companies said they were making structural adjustments of their foreign currency deposits to prevent exchange rate risks.

They also denied any investment in financial derivatives

Taxes apply

	i) No advance payment will be admissible. ii) Delivery Ex-Stock / Immediately. iii) Validity of offer should be 60 days iv) Sales of goods against this tender enquiry shall be subject to the production of proof of payment of duty & taxes, by the seller. No payment shall be permissible unless and until the said poof is provided. v) Tender's sale tax registration certificate must be submitted alongwith the quotation. v) Quotation should be infusive of the General Sales Tax.

cyber cafe

Facilities

The Pakistan Railways plans to have the first cyber cafe working at the Lahore railway station. An agreement with the Catalyst Communications has been singed and the firm is looking for a suitable place at the Lahore railway station. Fifteen such cafes will be opened at major railway stations in the year 2001 and another 15 in 2002. They will work like mini information technology centres over the entire PR network in the years to come. These cafes will be connected with each other and have e-mail, fax, telephone and computer training facilities for passengers and common people at a nominal fee.

Tax on Railway Gross Receipts

U.S. Supreme Court:

State Tax on Railway Gross Receipts, 82 U.S. 15 Wall. 284 284 (1872)

1. A statute of a state imposing a tax upon the gross receipts of railroad companies is not repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, though the gross receipts are made up in part from freights received for transportation of merchandise from the state to another state or into the state from another.

2. Such a tax is not a regulation, of interstate commerce.

3. Nor is it a tax on imports or exports.

4. Nor is it a tax upon interstate transportation.

5. A distinction made between a tax upon freights carried between states because of their carriage and a tax upon the fruits of such transportation after they have become intermingled with the other property of the carrier.

By an Act of the Legislature of Pennsylvania passed on the 23d day of February, 1866, entitled "An act to amend the revenue laws of the Commonwealth," a tax was imposed upon the gross receipts of certain companies. The second section was as follows:

"In addition to the taxes now provided by law, every railroad, canal, and transportation company incorporated under the laws of this Commonwealth and not liable to the tax upon income under existing laws shall pay to the Commonwealth a tax of three-fourths of one percentum upon the gross receipts of said company; the said tax shall be paid semiannually upon the first days of July and January, commencing on the first day of July, 1866, and for the purpose of ascertaining the amount of the same, it shall be the duty of the treasurer or other proper officer of said company to transmit to the auditor general a statement, under oath or affirmation, of the amount of gross receipts of the said company during the preceding six months, and if such company shall refuse or fail, for a period of thirty days after such tax becomes due, to make said return or to pay the same, the amount thereof, with an addition of ten percentum

Taxes

HIGH RAILWAY TAXES;

Why Some of the Leading Executives Are Protesting Against Further Increases:

The first charge against a railroad company's revenues is wages. Business may be very poor, the company may be running behind every day, but there is never any question raised as to the necessity for paying the employes at the end of every week or fortnight. Nor is the amount of the wages a matter for argument any more.

ZF Excellently Achieves IRIS Certification

on 21 April 2009




In mid-February 2009, the special driveline technology business unit of ZF Friedrichshafen passed certification according to the new International Railway Industry Standard (IRIS). Thus, the manufacturer of drive components for rail vehicles continues to live up to the basic requirements established for delivery orders granted by international manufacturers. With its own standard, the rail vehicle industry aims at generating a higher level of process quality along the entire supply chain.



Rail vehicle manufacturers issue special requirements for their suppliers: As a result of the high investment amounts for the rail business, the product lifecycle of up to 30 years is considerably greater than in comparable industry sectors. Moreover, project times are much longer. As a consequence, industry-specific standards for processes and retraceability throughout the supply chain became necessary.



To date, the highly general guidelines provided through industry standards such as ISO 9001 have not really provided a lot of support to rail vehicle manufacturers when it came to selecting suppliers. Therefore, upon an initiative launched by the four major system suppliers - AnsaldoBreda, Alstom, Bombardier and Siemens - the Union of European Railway Industries, or Union des Industries Ferroviaires Européennes (UNIFE) created its own, industry-specific standard, focusing on project management and securing quality throughout the entire product lifecycle.


In February 2009, the ZF special driveline technology business unit - as a manufacturer of rail vehicle drive components –passed certification in accordance with IRIS and is now listed on the supplier database.


Dr Thomas Hegel, director of the ZF special driveline technology business unit, said: "For us, certification is a compulsory exercise which we smoothly and successfully passed. Many of the directives now anchored in the new standard had already been established at our premises."
Since the end of 2006, companies have been able to apply for certification audits in accordance with the new industry standard. In the course of the coming months, IRIS will successfully establish itself throughout the rail vehicle industry: Major international rail vehicle manufacturers, such as the most important European rail vehicle operators, Deutsche Bahn, SNCF and RATP (France), will, from the end of 2009, only accept suppliers with an IRIS certificate. By March 2009, 200 IRIS certificates had already been granted worldwide.

KEYMILE Technology

Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn Monitors Railway Network With KEYMILE Technology


24 April 2009
Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn has chosen a KEYMILE solution to control and monitor radio and data connections between the signal boxes in its railway network. A key proviso was that the products used had to comply with all the stringent safety requirements established by the Swiss Office of Transport.
Because Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn has constantly enhanced its operations, the past few years have seen a steady rise in demand for automation and consequently remote control of signal boxes. As a result products are required to comply with all the regulations stipulated by the regulatory authority, which in Switzerland's case is the Federal Office of Transport (FOT).
For its complex telephony, radio and data connections, Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn uses the UMUX platform made by KEYMILE, one of the leading manufacturers of next-generation data transmission systems.


UMUX is a multi-service access system that provides comprehensive data services. A central network management system actively monitors all UMUX systems used. As a result, any malfunction can be quickly localised. If additional support is required, the KEYMILE support can use remote support access to the local network management system.


At the end of 2008 planning started to provide fibre-optic links between the signal boxes and the appropriate integrated control and information system (ILTIS) managed by UMUX. ILTIS R40, the current release, is based solely on IP connections: each signal box is connected with two 4Mbps point-to-point Ethernet lines and the paths are protected by a redundant path.
Should a malfunction occur, because the fibre optics have ruptured for example, a switch is made to the second path in milliseconds. European standard EN 50159-1 directives stipulating a closed data transmission network for these types of connections must be adhered to. In this case an essential consideration is a lack of interference. It must be shown that adjacent data lines do not have any impact on the ILTIS connections.


KEYMILE operates this application with proven, robust synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) technology. Via a circuit-switched leased line the paths are implemented with two 2Mbps (two VC-12s per connection). In addition to the SDH interfaces, the board used also has four Ethernet ports (10/100/1000BaseT) that are switched using Ethernet-over-SDH technology to SDH. Therefore neither routers nor switches are present on the connections (which in some cases are more than 100km long) and the requirements for lack of interference are fulfilled entirely.
An additional challenge the network faced was the restricted space for fibre-optics in the Furka tunnel. For the main path and the second path, only one fibre-optic each was available. Another difficulty was that a single section of track is more than 40km long. To bridge this section STM-4 data transmission with powerful small factor pluggable (SFP) modules was implemented that enabled sending and receiving via a single fibre-optic line.


At the end of last year the new solution was commissioned for controlling radio and data connections between the signal boxes. It has been working perfectly since that time. Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn is convinced it has made a wise long-term investment. In the next few years the railway company will continually convert to more remote-controlled signal boxes. As a result, more stations can be integrated with little outlay.

San Francisco

25-Year Rail Plan Approved in San Francisco



San Francisco Bay Area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission has approved a $218m 25-year transportation plan that was initially delayed because of the economic downturn.
The projects included in the programme include the extension of Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) from Fremont to San Jose and Santa Clara, Caltrain system electrification and introduction of SMART rail system in Marin and Sonoma counties.
It also includes service enhancements along the Amtrak Capitol Corridor and extension of rail from Pittsburg and Bay Point BART station to eastern Contra Costa County.

State Rail Upgrades

South Dakota's Department of Transportation in the US has been given the go-ahead to upgrade three state-owned rail lines.
The regional rail authorities leasing the lines from the state would be eligible for funding and would be repaid through a $20-per-car-surcharge on freight hauled on the rail lines, Progressive Railroading has reported.
The three state-owned lines that will receive funds are the Canton-to-Elk Point line, the 76-mile Britton line and the 15-mile Huron-to-Yale line.
The initiative is aimed at improving safety and reducing shipping costs.
The Canton-to-Elk Point Line will receive $7.6m to install 14 miles of welded rail, operated by D&I Railroad and leased to Sioux Valley Regional Railroad Authority.
The 76-mile Britton line between Aberdeen and Geneseo Junction will receive $2m for track improvement, operated by Missouri Valley & Western Railroad and leased to Marshall County Regional Railroad Authority.

California High-Speed Rail Draft

California High-Speed Rail Draft Approved;



A high-speed rail line connecting Las Vegas to California has moved a step closer for implementation, with the Federal Railroad Administration passing the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for Desertxpress.
The 180-mile line will run on exclusive tracks along Interstate 15 between Victorville, California and Las Vegas if approved.
Trips between states could take an hour and 20 minutes at 150mph, according to reports.
Desertxpress Enterprise – the entity developing the project – is expected to invest $3.5–4bn on the project in addition to the $25m it has already spent on the EIS process.
According to the EIS, DesertXpress is forecast to carry more than 10 million people per year by 2015.
DesertXpress Enterprises' partner and spokesman, Sig Rogich, said: "The project is estimated to reduce up to 360 million pounds of CO2 emissions in the Interstate 15 corridor by greatly reducing automobile travel and replacing it with energy-efficient mass transportation in one of America's most-congested transportation corridors."

UK Partnership to Design Saudi Stations

The UK-based Foster & Partners and Buro Happold joint venture has been selected to design four stations along a new high-speed railway line that connects Makkah and Madinah via Jeddah in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The stations will be environmentally friendly, have separate arrival and departure areas, and generous circulation spaces that provide a high-quality travel experience for rail passengers.
The railway line is operated by Haramain High-speed Railway and features trains capable of speeds up to 300km per hour.

Forex graph

The company, formerly the railway arm of the Chinese military, said that without the huge losses from its Australian-dollar conversion, profit for the year would have more than doubled to 5.49 billion yuan.
Citigroup advised investors in a note Wednesday to avoid China Railway's shares, saying the company's revenue growth is likely to slow throughout the year. Citi said its target price on the share is HK$4.10, or about 21% below the company's closing price in the previous session.

Forex loss

China Railway's annual profit hit by $600 million forex loss
Infrastructure builder says profit halved after bad bets on Australian dollar


HONG KONG (MarketWatch)
-- China Railway Group said Tuesday net income for 2008 nearly halved from a year earlier because of a 4.1 billion yuan ($601 million) foreign-exchange loss after it placed a large portion of the proceeds from its Hong Kong initial public offering into Australian dollars.