The Greater Toronto Transit Authority recently ordered 20 railcars (below) from Bombardier, valued at US$48 million. The cars will be built at the company's Thunder Bay, Ont., facility. Meanwhile, the company is relocating its Berlin headquarters to the historic Royal Directorate building, right, located near Potsdamer Platz, which has served as headquarters for a range of railway organizations over the past 100 years.

   A long-proposed plan to build the first U.S. refinery in nearly 30 years gained momentum in 2005 as organizers reached a deal with the Mexican government to build a large pipeline to the Mexican coast. Arizona Clean Fuels Yuma plans to begin construction on the $3.4-billion project late this year with completion projected for 2010. The refinery would produce about 150,000 barrels of motor fuels, 85,000 barrels of gasoline, 35,000 gallons of diesel fuel and 30,000 barrels of jet fuel per day.
   The company says the refinery, planned for a remote area about 100 miles (161 km.) southwest of Phoenix in Yuma County, will be the most advanced fuel refinery in North America. It will employ about 300.
   But the biggest refinery project is an expansion by Saudi Arabian national oil company Saudi Aramco in its native land. It's just a smidgen of a total oil-sector project list that amounts to $130 billion. The planned materials investments by Saudi Aramco are $20 billion through 2010. Its services expenditure during the same time period is expected to exceed $23 billion, with $2 billion in support services alone.
   Amgen's $1.1 billion expansion in West Greenwich, R.I., set the pace in 2005 pharmaceutical projects. But it's by no means the latest project for Amgen, as the just-announced projects in Ireland and the U.K. attest.