40th railML Conference – in Gothenburg with a livestream!

by Joyce Dillon (railML.org) (comments: 0)

railML.org is proud to announce that our 40th railML Conference was able to take place as a physical event once again. It was held on Wednesday the 10th of November in the beautiful city of Gothenburg in Sweden. As the past conferences showed that a virtual alternative was well received by much of the community, the conference was hosted both virtually and online. We were glad to welcome 25 participants on site and over 80 who were present online from all over the world.

Opening presentations

The first presentation given was from Mathias Hofren from (Trafikverket / SE), where he presented how the NEST use case may be potentially implemented at the company using the railML® 3.2 beta1 made available to the development working groups.

Afterwards, the Infrastructure Coordinator, Christian Rahmig, provided an extensive insight into the work on this schema. For version 3.2, the working group is focusing on three use cases: ETCS Track Net, Integrated Traffic Management System, and Schematic Track Plan. The descriptions can be found on the railML wiki.

Timetable news

There have been many developments in the Timetable working group and the members of the group were able to give many interesting presentations summarizing the work done these past 6 months. All presentations were prefaced by a short introduction from Milan Wölke, the Timetable Coordinator.

First off, Michael Holakovsky gave everyone an inside look at the newest proposed use case: Duty planning and staff shifts (SHFT). This shall allow users to exchange the planning results of a personnel duty scheduling system in the rail sector with other systems, such as optimization systems, depot management systems or employee support systems. Following this, Thomas Kabisch (Stadler / DE) showed how the passenger information use case in railML 2.5 is used at Stadler. David Lichti (Hacon / DE) then gave a summary of an example of railML 3 timetable modeling based on the advanced example that can downloaded from the website.

ISO/TS 4398:2022 RailDax and Common updates

As was previously announced in the March news article in 2020, the development of the ISO Technical Standard (TS) 4398:2022 “Intelligent transport systems — Guided transportation service planning data exchange” is based on railML 2.4, as this the most mature railML version up to date. Torben Brand (Jernbanedirektoratet / NO) gave a report on the progress and what the next steps are. The voting to approve the committee draft is well underway and shall conclude on December 7th, 2021. To find out how to support the development, contact the Organisation Team. More information can also be found on the RailDax page at the Jernbanedirektoratet website.

Jerónimo Padilla (RNE / AT) held a fascinating presentation about the future Digital Infrastructure Information System and explained how and why railML should be one of the data-exchange formats supported. This was followed by Fabiana Diotallevi (Neat / IT), who presented the high-level UML that was created as a very useful “byproduct” of the RailDax development.

Finally, Thomas Nygreen, in charge of the Common Coordination, gave a short report on polymorphism, the element <any>, its pros and cons, and whether it should still be used. He invites the community to give their feedback in the forum.

Data digitalization, Interlocking report and other news

To round off the conference, a last presentation by a member of the community was held. Neil Freeman (Alstom / SE) shared with us the Signaling System Data Digitalization Strategy at Alstom Sweden. This strategy aims to automate data input and output for the Alstom application and shall support railML 3.2 as well as railML 2.x versions.

Interlocking and Rollingstock Coordinator, Jörg von Lingen, gave a short presentation about his area. Developments in railML 3.2 include the addition of <intermediateCodePoints> and the usage of Radio Block Center (RBC) and train number description fields. Finally, there were some words from Vasco Paul Kolmorgen, the governance coordinator. He presented the new partners and an updated version timeline, as well how the development and work is generally progressing. He took over presenting the wiki news as well. A big thanks to Mr. Ferri Leberl for preparing the presentation and for his work on the railML wiki. 

Next conferences

In the end, railML.org is pleased that another conference was successfully held, especially considering the difficulties that come with a livestream. The lessons learned during the process shall be applied to our next conference in the Spring to hopefully make the experience even better for the participants.

We must thank the hard work, ideas and motivation of the coordinators, stakeholders, and community members. Especial thanks go out to Neil Freeman and Alstom for agreeing to host the conference and taking care of the organization in Sweden. We also say “thank you” everyone who gave a presentation and shared their knowledge, experience, and time with the audience.

The next German-language conference is scheduled for April 25th, 2022, in Dresden, Germany. More information and registration will be posted on the railML.org event page. The next English-language conference is planned for the Autumn of 2022.

As always, feedback from the community is very welcome, please comment or contact the Organisation Team per email. The conference slides are available for download on the 40th railML Conference event page

We look forward to seeing you at the next event!

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