11th VPI Symposium 2021

Taking advantage of the European Year of Rails: Advancing digital automatic coupling (DAC) 11th VPI Symposium as livestream with 500 viewers

“DAC is picking up steam. It is now time to take advantage of the tail wind of the European Year of Rails to speedily move forward with the migration process,” said Malte Lawrenz, VPI chairperson by livestream in his greeting at this year’s VPI Symposium. The wagon keeper association put two topics important to the future of railway traffic at the focus of its symposium: DAC and digital data interchange between wagon keepers and workshops. Informative talks and podium discussions offered exciting insights into the progress on digitalisation and automation of railway traffic. Roughly 500 participants watched the symposium streamed from Hamburg.

“In many aspects, we are farther along than we thought possible one year ago: The DAC4EU demonstrator train for selection of a uniform coupling type has left the station, the committees of the DAC Delivery Programme in Europe have commenced their work. The momentum generated by the DAC Charter adopted at last year’s VPI Symposium has had a positive effect,” said Sven Wellbrock, Chief Operating Officer Europe & Chief Safety Officer of VTG, in his talk. “Today, it is necessary to work efficiently within the complex European structures and to take advantage of the open window of opportunity,” stressed Wellbrock.

This was also confirmed by the participants of the subsequent podium discussion, Oliver Behrens (GATX), Gilles Peterhans (UIP), Matthias Knüpling (VTG) and Jens Engelmann (EU Freight DAC Delivery Programme). They agreed that it is now time to develop a joint European solution as well as an implementation strategy. Without national and European funding programmes, however, the conversion to the new coupling technology will not succeed. The sector needs sufficient financial support to accomplish this Herculean task.

Oliver Behrens offered a look into the workshop of the DAC4EU project and reported on the test setup as well as the evaluation criteria for the selected coupling types on the demonstrator train. “We are solidly on schedule,” said Behrens. The upcoming selection of a uniform coupling standard is a milestone on the path to Europe-wide implementation of DAC.

In the second thematic block of the Symposium entitled “Data Interchange as per VPI 08”, Joachim Wirtgen, managing director of the VPI service company VERS, shared information on the possibilities for process optimisation offered by digital data interchange between wagon keepers and workshops according to VPI 08 for the organisation of maintenance work. The start of the year saw the launch of the VERS app, which enables the uncomplicated use of the interchange functionality in workshops. Ines Villmann-Doll (INVEHO Germany), Bernd Hommels (Project Partners), Jakob Kudlinski (GATX) and Peter Reinshagen (ERMEWA) highlighted the importance of the further development of VPI 08 standards for increasing maintenance efficiency.

The 11th VPI Symposium took place in a purely digital format this year for the first time due to the coronavirus. The traditional New Year’s reception with roughly 300 guests on the evening before had to be entirely cancelled. “We took the opportunity this year to open up our symposium to the entire sector at no cost via streaming,” said Lawrenz. However, he is very much looking forward to greeting the participants personally again next year.