‘We invite you to join this conference about ERTMS, Energy Saving in Rail and Predictive Maintenance’ Marieke van Gompel RailTech Conferences 2019 took place between 26 – 28 March 2019 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The conferences were part of the RailTech Europe 2019 exhibition. The RailTech Conferences 2019 provided an extensive platform and the most dynamic meeting place for the experts and professionals in the rail sector from all over the world, shared the most impactful breakthroughs and most sophisticated and modern ideas on industry related infrastructure and potential fields of improvement.
Programme Committee
The RailTech Conferences 2019 explored the following three themes:
- Day 1 – 26 March 2019: ERTMS
- Day 2 – 27 March 2019: Energy Saving
- Day 3 – 28 March 2019: Predictive maintenance of Rail Infrastructure
Speakers of RailTech Europe included:
Day 1 (26 March): ERTMS
The conference day about ERTMS took place on the first day of RailTech Conferences 2019 on March 26. European countries are implementing the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) that will improve interoperability and safety. The Dutch ministry of Transport and Watermanagement presented the roll-out strategy for the Netherlands. An overall view of the implementation of ERTMS in different European countries was given. Moreover, there were presentations about the latest developments around this rail traffic management system, followed by several case studies with best practices.
Day 2 (27 March): Energy Saving
The second day of RailTech Conferences was focused on energy saving. Railway transport is more energy efficient than most other transport modes, but still a large consumer of energy. A further reduction of energy consumption is important to reduce energy costs and CO2 emissions, and enlarges the competitive advantages of railway transport to mobility. Energy efficiency is a main issue to the railway sector and many energy efficiency innovations are being investigated, tested and deployed. These include innovations in energy efficient design of rolling stock, energy saving solutions in infrastructure technology, and technology for energy efficient train operations.
Day 3 (28 March): Predictive Maintenance
Maintenance of Rail Infrastructure was the topic on day 3 of the RailTech Conferences 2019 on March 28. When the amount of freight and passenger trains increases, there will be a need for optimisation of the maintenance of the rail infrastructure. With less time to work on the tracks, the railway sector has to think about solutions which make it possible to do maintenance when trains are running, to administer predictive maintenance instead of corrective maintenance and to analyse the wheel/rail contact.
Programme committee
Our programme managers ensured the review and preparation of a high-quality programme with a variety of international speakers. The programme committee consisted of:
- Rob Goverde: Professor of Railway Traffic Operations & Management at the Department of Transport & Planning at Technical University of Delft
- Bart van der Spiegel: Energy Management at Infrabel
- Simon Fletcher: Director Standardisation – Coordinator European Region at UIC
- Marieke van Gompel: editor-in-chief Spoorpro.nl and RailTech.com
Media partners
