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• Alstom and CAF recently inked a $227.7 million contract with Catalan Railways (FGC) to supply 24 suburban trains. Alstom, whose share of the pact is $113.9 million, will supply 12 trains that’ll be manufactured at its Santa Perpetua plant in Barcelona. The agreement includes an option for 20 additional trains. The EMU-type trains, which will comprise four cars and accommodate a total of 800 passengers, will run on a 28-mile line linking Barcelona and Vallés in Catalonia.

• A Thales-led consortium won a $28.9 million contact to upgrade signaling systems and install rail traffic control for a 31-mile Ronda-Gaucín stretch of the Bobadilla-Algeciras railway in eastern Spain. The project’s aim: replace the existing mechanical technology with a “latest-generation electronic interlocking signaling system” in seven stations between Ronda and Gaucín, boosting line capacity, speed and service reliability, according to a prepared statement. The project also calls for implementing an automatic block system on a single track, a centralized traffic control center and electronic axle counters in stations and routes. Meanwhile, Thales also supplied French rail network Réseau Ferré de France with a PC-based interlocking system. Thales’s PIPC G2 system represents an upgrade of the PIPC V1 system that had been installed in more than 100 stations, the company said.

• RailComm recently provided a wireless remote control yard system for CSX Transportation’s Willard Yard in Ohio. Existing field devices and communications were utilized and interfaced to the new central control system. The RailComm DOC® System, which is designed to provide individual switch control and entrance-exit (NX) routing selection to all locations, provides full event-recording capability.