ETIHAD Rail, the UAE’s Dh40-billion ($10.89 billion) national railway network, has been gaining pace both in terms of construction on site and in the number of clients and should be ready to start shipping goods by the end of this year.

WITH the award of a QR8.4-billion ($2.18 billion) design-and-build contract on the Doha Metro project, Qatar has flagged off its momentous rail development plan which involves four rail initiatives – to be known as Qatar Integrated Rail Programme (QIRP).

IT’S a railway station announcement of seemingly no importance. In the UK, it asks “Inspector Sands to please report to the control room.” However, more of him later. The first railway in the Middle East was the Alexandria to Cairo line, which opened in 1856.

NAUE, a Germany-headquartered company with decades of geosynthetics experience, says its new geocomposite product Secutex EDF addresses the low elasticity issues faced in constructing railway substructure by using nonwovens to improve the bed support conditions of track ballast for railway tracks.