On 3rd April, the UIC leaflet 612 Dissemination Workshop on Driver-Machine-Interfaces, Driver Cab and Train configurations took place at the UIC premises in Paris. The workshop, gathering 21 experts from vehicle manufacturers, sub-system suppliers, railway undertakings, ERA and standardisation bodies was chaired by Steffen Jank (Deutsche Bahn) in his function as UIC PTR Programme Manager.
The goal of the workshop was to provide information about the leaflets family UIC 612-0, -1 and -2 and to facilitate discussions between users from different organisations.
Ralph Müller (Deutsche Bahn) gave an overview about the intention and background inside the former MODTRAIN project that contributed to the UIC 612 series and the way ahead. He underlined that the UIC leaflet 612 is a transverse leaflet with a system view and operational focus, which is already used in some purchasing projects. It is the expectation of the railways operators to drive technical standardisation by means of common operational requirements as they are provided in UIC 612. He reminded that ERA is working on a specification of the ETCS DMI. It is the role of UIC 612 to help focussing on rolling stock integration needs and ensuring management of nominal and degraded situations, e. g. by clever and economically feasible redundancy concepts.
Didier Georget (SNCF) explained the tests done on the SNCF Driving Research Simulator SIMUFER to check and validate UIC Leaflet 612 requirements from a human factors point of view.
Dominique Ligier (ERA) added the development, background and methodology of the ERTMS/ETCS DMI specification as a mandatory document for Baseline 3.0. He highlighted the need to find a common consistent approach for the driver between the several parties involved. He explained the principles of exchange of information between UIC and ERA. There is an agreement that CER support groups will provide input to ERA based on UIC deliverables like UIC Leaflet 612. On the other hand, if there is a request to change the ERTMS/ETCS DMI specification (e.g. for vehicle integration purposes), a formal change request process has to be triggered. The change request will be reviewed by the stakeholders and in the end need to be approved by RISC.
In the following general discussion among others the question was raised about the future development of the UIC Leaflet 612 series. Steffen Jank replied that the updated and revised UIC Leaflet 612-0 and -1 have been approved in November 2008 and UIC Leaflet 612-2 in March 2009. The revision work on the other parts UIC 612-0x “display systems in drivers cab” is in progress in the UIC Sector Expert Team SET 15 “cab and operation incl. Train control and monitoring system TCMS”.
In a final summary participants considered the workshop as a success. Dominique Ligier pointed out that the workshop helped to understand interfaces and each others priorities. ERA appreciates continuing input from UIC Leaflet 612 for the evolution of the ERA DMI specification.
Current experience shows that the commercial application of UIC Leaflet 612 will increase and stakeholders will give their feed-back from lessons learnt in current rolling stock projects for further improvement of UIC Leaflet 612. Therefore an annual exchange of experiences with increased UIC Leaflet 612 application, the evolving ERA ETCS DMI specification and the cab related standardisation work at CEN would be beneficial for the Rolling stock community. But also other highly rolling stock integrative aspects like the brake functional requirements request deeper exchange of experiences in the view of approaching interoperability. Questions and proposals are always welcome and can be forwarded to the UIC PTR Programme Managers, who will coordinate the response by the UIC Sector Expert Teams SET.
