On 27 September, ÖBB hosted a meeting of the WCRR Executive Committee at its headquarters in Vienna as it prepares for the twelfth World Congress on Railway Research. The meeting was chaired by Japanese WRCC hosts, RTRI, and participants included representatives from DB, SNCF, Trenitalia, AAR/TTCI, RSSB and UIC. The team of this year’s WCRR is “Railway Research to Enhance the Customer Experience” and it will be held in Tokyo from 28 October to 1 November 2019.
Call for abstracts - results
Among the many items discussed was the results of the call for abstracts, which was concluded early. Well over 600 high-quality research and innovation abstracts have been received from the six UIC regions. In particular, Japan, China and France were active participants. Most of the abstracts received were submitted under the heading of “Infrastructure” as a main topic. The diagram below illustrates the distribution of topics:

Following a thorough evaluation by selected expert reviewers, the abstracts will be submitted to the 70th session of Congress. Confirmation of the selected abstracts will be sent to the authors and full papers will be requested by early February. Complete papers shall then be submitted by 10 May 2019.
The schedule for the twelfth WCRR includes three interesting plenary sessions, oral sessions and poster sessions. In order to ensure a well-balanced programme, around ten additional “organised sessions” on specially-selected ‘hot’ topics with invited speakers will be added.

The themes for the three plenary sessions were also agreed during the meeting and potential speakers were proposed and discussed. The following were chosen as the themes for the plenary sessions:

• “The Role of Railway Operators in Enhancing the Customer Experience”
• “Contributions of Railway Suppliers in Elevating the Value of Railways”
• “R&D for Future Railways”
  Sponsorship opportunities and exhibition space
  WCRR 2019 is the world’s largest international congress on railway research and is expected to be attended by about 900 railway-related participants, of which around 400 participants are expected to join the congress from abroad. The WCRR 2019 organising committee firmly believes that sponsors and attendees of the congress will enjoy excellent opportunities to promote their interests to railway-related delegates from around the world and to further raise awareness of their organisations’ presence in the railways. An overview of the exhibition space is shown below.

As usual, the sponsorship plan was also discussed at the meeting, as well as the sponsors that have already registered for the various categories. There are only a few remaining sponsorship slots available. The same holds true for the few remaining open spaces or booths in the exhibition space. The Japanese organising committee has requested that any organisations interested in WCRR 2019 sponsorship contact them by email to make an initial formal commitment by October 31, 2018. There is a strong possibility that sponsorship offers will not be accepted after this date (apart from advertisements, which may be accepted at a later stage). For more detailed information, please visit https://wcrr2019.org/sponsorships.html and contact the Japanese organising team directly at wcrr2019 at issjp.com

For further information, please see the WCRR 2019 website https://wcrr2019.org/index.html.

The WCRR Executive Committee wishes to extend its thanks to Ms Doris Danzinger and her team for supporting this meeting.