The Arab Consulting Engineers Company (ACE Moharram-Bakhoum) is partaking in the project of modernize signaling and communication systems on the 118km Nag Hammadi – Luxor railway track at a total cost of $110m. Moharram-Bakhoum will be designing and supervising the implementation of control stations, civil works, telecommunications networks, and electricity works, while also providing technical support to select the best technical and financial offers for the implementation of the project. Ahmed Moharram, Group Executive director of Moharram-Bakhoum, and President of Anchorage Investments, said, "The development of Nag Hammadi – Luxor railway track is amongst the most important national projects undertaken by the Egyptian government and the state's political leadership to provide safe and easy mass transportation for all citizens." He added: "The scope of the project is to establish an advanced Centralized Traffic Control (CTC) System to supervise the operation of all trains transiting the track aided by 14 Electrical Infrastructure Services (EIS), and 45 crossings. It is part of a bigger project embarked upon by the Egyptian National Railways to modernize all national railway signaling systems and replace the current old mechanical system with modern electronic tools. Once fully delivered, the project will raise the capacity of the railway from 56 trains/day to 200 trains/day and increase the design speed to 160 km/h throughout the Alexandria – High Dam railway line." Moharram pointed out that the project to modernize signaling and communication systems on the Nag Hammadi – Luxor line has been awarded by the Egyptian National Railways and the Hyundai Rotem-Daea consortium of South Korea under the supervision of a consortium consisting of Korean National Railways (KNR), Asia Railway Technology Co., Ltd. (ARTECH), and Moharram-Bakhoum. The Egyptian National Railways is raising the efficiency of the railways network by renewing several parts of the national network to achieve the highest levels of safety and security by providing close surveillance on the trains throughout the network. In addition, crossings are being upgraded and equipped with automatic gates, warning bells, and lights. This would reduce accidents and achieve safety for vehicles, while also enabling train engineers to contact the operations room easily from any semaphore in cases of emergency.
