Frédéric Henon, UIC co-leader of the System Pillar Task 4, in cooperation with Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking, Flagship Project 5, Sounding Board European DAC Delivery Programme (EDDP), introduced the first webinar on Full Digital Freight Train Operations (FDFTO) enabled by the Digital Automatic Coupler (DAC).
With more than 500 participants registered, it is clear that this webinar topic appeals to a wide audience.

The focus of the webinar was on harmonised operational procedures, which represent one of the preconditions required both to enable the uniform use of new technology and to keep the complexity of FDFTO requirements as low as possible.

During the webinar, the preliminary Target Operational Procedures elaborated so far were explained in terms of their general content and structure. All interested parties have since been required to examine, and to provide further input to, DAC-related activities with EU operational standards.

Frédéric Henon was accompanied by Javier Ibáñez de Yrigoyen, Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking Senior Programme Manager, who presented the Europe’s Rail integrated R&I Programme, Dr.-Ing. Jens Engelmann, EDDP Co-Manager, who explained the context and opened the webinar, and Andreas Haller, Europe’s Rail JU TRANS4M-R Lead of System Architecture, who presented the preliminary operational procedures developed by FP5/WP2, in the Technical Report on Preliminary Target Operational Procedures, available here: https://uic.org/events/IMG/pdf/d2.1_preliminary_operational_procedures_v1_0_draft_public_disclaimer.pdf.

Finally, Frédéric Henon explained the overall approach and the working activities going forward, with the objective of delivering the first draft of an “operations rule book” by the end of 2024.

For the video recorded session and the support presentation displayed during the session, please follow this link: https://uic.org/events/webinar-on-fdfto-full-digital-freight-train-operations-enabled-by-the-digital.