CAIRO – Egyptian Transport Minister Kamel el-Wazir attended on Wednesday the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the Egyptian National Railway (ENR) and the Spanish company “Thales” to modernise Egypt’s railway signaling systems.
The MoU was signed by Chairman of the Board of Directors of ENR Moustafa Abdel-Latif Abual-Makarem and CEO of Thales Spain Jesús Sánchez.
The Transport Ministry said in a statement that the MoU aims at studying the implementation of the duplication and development of the railway signaling and communication systems on the 65km long Qalyub-Shebin El-Qanater-Zagazig line.
Under the deal, the Spanish company will help upgrade the central control tower in Shebin el-Qanater to coordinate train traffic along the entire line from Qalyub to Shebin el-Qanater, the statement added.
The Transport Minister said projects are underway to modernise signaling systems of the 1,900km long railway network, at a total cost of LE50 billion, to maximise railway safety and security.
The minister also attended the signing of a memorandum of understanding to modernise the 94km long Qalyub-Menouf-Tanta line that guarantees railway operators SIL4 fail-safe automatic track occupancy detection directly at the trackside.
As part of the Egyptian National Railways (ENR) Signaling Modernisation project, the existing mechanical signaling systems are being replaced with Thales’ Electronic Interlocking System (EIS) across two of the ENR’s most prominent lines; 208km long Cairo-Alexandria and 250km long Assiut-Nagahamadi.
