Luc Lallemand, CEO of Infrabel, chaired the Plenary Session of the Rail System Forum in the presence of over 30 railway members from Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Luc Lallemand especially welcomed the delegation from Iranian Railways, new Sector Chairmen and new RSF Steering Board members.
UIC Director General, Jean-Pierre Loubinoux, who could not join the meeting in person, prepared a video message for all RSF Members.
The new Rail System department director, Dr Marc Antoni, who had previously worked for 38 years at SNCF introduced the Outlook and Roadmap of projects towards 2017 and beyond.
The overall message from both RSF Chairman and UIC Director General was a need to improve the communication of the RSF work results and be more rigorous and professional at project presentations and dissemination.
However, this 10th Session of the RSF focused mainly on New Project Proposals in 2016 and the ap-proval of a number of technical documents.
The following International Railway Standards were approved during the session:
IRS 70014 “Fixed installations - Maintenance Guidelines of OCL” and IRS 70015 “Fixed installations - Diagnosis of OCL conditions” with the integration of comments received from a member.
IRS 70016 “Fixed installations - Safety measures to be adopted when working on or nearby OCL”
IRS 70017 “Fixed installations - Evaluation of incidents on the railway Energy system”
IRS 70018 “Fixed installations - Guidelines on OCL earthing systems for Safety in tunnels”
According to a survey carried out by the RSD director, the main needs of the European railways can be divided into six main themes:
1) ERTMS/Safety and interoperability demonstration
2) Digitalisation/contributions and risks
3) Asset Management (technical and economic aspects)
4) Automatisation of operational processes
5) Smart Track (modern track without maintenance or intelligent track)
6) Interface between Rolling Stock and Infrastructure
In order to cover all relevant fields, a list of TOP 12 RSF project proposals were set up which were consequently presented by each Sector Chairman.
The newly elected Sector Chairman, Marco Caposciutti (Trenitalia), presented two new project pro-posals prepared by the Rolling Stock Sector: Passenger Door System, Alarm System and Communi-cation System: “Safety and Standardised Operation” and “Rules for the consist and braking of international freight trains”. A new proposal on “Brake Performance Deficiency of UCT (Unaccompanied Combined Transport) trains” was presented directly by future project Manager, Pierre Senglet (SBB).
Pierre-Etienne Gautier (Systra), Train Track Interaction Sector Chairman, presented two new pro-jects for 2016 as follows: “Virtual approval of railway vehicles” and “Wheel/rail roughness meas-urement and categorisation”.
Francisco Cardoso Dos Reis (Refer) newly elected RSF Track & Structure Chairman, presented the new project for 2016: “Slab track: decision making, design specifications maintenance and asset management (N.B. Title will be changed to avoid confusion)
Sector Chairman, Thomas Joindot (SNCF), presented two new projects for 2016: “Design, defini-tion and localisation of a “Trackcircuit” for detection of broken rails without detection of trains (ETCS L3, line without TC)” and “What is the positive support of remote monitoring and supervision systems for maintenance, operation, renewal of signalling systems – organisational consequences?”
Andy Kirwan (Network Rail), newly elected Chairman of the Asset Management Experts Group and successor of Dominique Gardin from Infrabel, presented two new projects for 2016: “Life-time cost, risk, performance, optimisation” and “Asset Management Procurement methods”.
Antonio Berrios Villalba (ADIF), newly elected Chairman, delivered a presentation of a new pro-ject for 2016: “Guideline inventory energy management”.
And finally, Airy Magnien, Head of UIC Data Statistics Economics Unit, presented a new project for 2016 on “GRIDS” Geographic Railway Infrastructure Datamart and Scenario-player.
An update on Standardisation Platform matters was given by Chairman, Stefano Guidi (Trenitalia) and members were invited to participate in the forthcoming 2nd UIC Conference on Railway Standardisation which will take place in Paris on 9 June 2015.
Isabelle De Keyzer (UIC) gave an overview on dissemination results of three ongoing and three finalised EU projects, namely Capacity4Rail, Merlin, Sustrail (ongoing) and Mainline , D-Rail and Euremco (finalised).
The LICB (Lasting Infrastructure Cost Benchmarking) database was presented at the end of the session by Teodor Gradinariu (UIC). The importance to have benchmarking methods unique for railways and the possibility of an open data exchange was highlighted. Members were invited to join this important UIC activity.
The next meeting will be held at UIC in Paris on Wednesday 28 October 2015.
