STUDY OBJECTIVES To locate geographical sources of engine exhaust emissions in Great Britain and to link them with the birth addresses of children dying from cancer. To estimate the cancer initiating roles of nearby roads and railways and to measure effective ranges. DESIGN Birth and death addresses of all children born between 1955 and 1980 in Great Britain, and dying from leukaemia or other...

When the railway appeared as a new means of transportation in the first half of the 19th century, its top speed of 30 to 40 km/h was considered dangerous. In Germany, where Adler transported two barrels of beer between Nuremberg and Fürth in 1835 as the first German rail freight, physicians warned people against such perilous adventures and farmers were worried that their cows grazing alongside...

GSM-Railways (GSM-R) is an obsolete mobile technology with a number of shortcomings in terms of capacity and capability. These shortcomings become a major issue for railways as GSM-R may limit the number of running trains in some areas and it cannot support advanced data services. Hence, alternative technologies, such as LTE, have to be considered as a future railway communication technology. T...

GSM-Railways (GSM-R) is an obsolete mobile technology with a number of shortcomings in terms of capacity and capability. These shortcomings become a major issue for railways as GSM-R may limit the number of running trains in some areas and it cannot support advanced data services. Hence, alternative technologies, such as LTE, have to be considered as a future railway communication technology. T...

This article describes a next-generation architecture for wireless communications, based on mobile phone carriers (GPRS) and broadband (WiFi), developed for the field of railways and allowing "train-to-earth" communications. This communication channel aims to complement traditional railway communication systems and its benefits make the deployment of new services, such as passenger oriented ser...

Ballast as a part of the railway system plays an important role in the operation of the railways and also has a great impact on repair and maintenance activities. Hence most of the repair and maintenance activities in traditional railway systems are due to the defections in the ballast layer and therefore most of the maintenance budget is spent on repairing these defects. These repair and maint...

In the present paper, challenges and prospects of the European railways, along with a proposal for a new strategy policy and specific measures are presented. The declining course of European railways concerning traffic and revenues is first analyzed. Conditions to introduce intra - modal competition are surveyed, among them separation of infrastructure fro...