Siemens of Germany, Alstom of France, Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane of Italy and PORR of Austria are forming a consortium with Malaysian engineering group George Kent to bid for the high-speed rail link between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, it was announced on Monday. Japan is also making an “all-out bid” for the contract to construct Southeast Asia’s largest-ever infrastructure project. The high-speed rail valued by analysts at about $17 billion is the biggest project undertaken by the Southeast Asian neighbors in recent years, and will test a relationship that has been frosty since the end of the colonial era in the 1960s.