As the 2012 edition of Innotrans highlighted, the international railway market is in a continuous state of ferment.
Brought to a close on 21 September, the top international trade fair for the rail sector sent out some very precise signals: an increase in the number of exhibiting companies and visitors, a more substantial presence and direct interest from Arab, Indian, Russian and South American delegations and no less than 104 world premiers of new products, all to the companies’ benefit, as you can read in the words of the top managers we interviewed for the Special section of our magazine.
A market which is by no means standing still therefore, and this means that even a prestigious Italian company such as Italcertifer needs to evolve radically: from a body which took care of testing and research within the Gruppo FS to a company operating on an international level in the sector of Certification of Safety Verification and Validation of projects for public-sector contracting.
As you can read in the interview with the chairman and managing director of Italcertifer, engineer Carlo Carganico, the company has undergone some significant changes to become an increasingly reliable certification company on an international level and, through some important projects underway overseas, it has managed to export the expertise shown by Gruppo FS in designing the high-speed line with the highest level of performance ever built in the world.
And in this context African countries, which have recently been the topic of some of our Focus On articles, are also working towards sustaining their own economic growth. In this issue we talk about Senegal which, as the Minister of Infrastructure of Transport, Mor Ngom, and his technical adviser, engineer El Hadji Malick Niang, explained, is gearing itself up with a series of tools to relaunch railway transport, including a new franchising and management model for the country’s main railway line.
We had the pleasure of meeting them in Dakar just as an important round of consultations was taking place also with colleagues from Mali which, together with Senegal, shares ownership of the country’s main line, the one running from the capital to Bamako. A route which could one day become part of that west-east transcontinental line crossing the continent which the Islamic Countries Conference has dreamt about realizing on more than one occasion.
So in this November issue there is no shortage of interesting topics and interviews which, as always, are exclusive to Railway Engineering.
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Enjoy your read.
