The European railway industry faces great challenges in need for increased network capacity. Ageing infrastructure assets require efficient and sustainable interventions to maintain and improve current levels of performance. To meet these demands and increase the operational performance of the railway infrastructure assets, innovation is needed to enable a step-change in reliability, availability, maintainability and safety (RAMS) and also to optimise asset capital and LCC. The IN2TRACK3 proposal addresses the topic of “Research into optimised and future railway Infrastructure” of the 2020 Horizon 2020 SHIFT2RIL call. The project is a continuation of IN2TRACK and IN2TRACK2 and aims to further develop and demonstrate research results and innovations developed. IN2TRACK3 will develop physical as well as digital technology and methodology demonstrators for the Track, Switches & Crossings and Bridge & Tunnel assets and the project is aligned to the SHIFT2RAIL overall aims. The project structure is designed around three technical sub-projects aiming at both improving the operational performance of existing infrastructure assets and providing radical new system solutions delivering a step-change in performance, improving methods and repair techniques, improve quality, reduce costs and extend the service life of assets and structures. The project is led by Trafikverket, the Swedish Transport Administration Agency, the consortium consists of 27 expert partners originating from 11 European countries and the partners involved are infrastructure managers, research partners, technology developers and industry partners. IN2TRACK3 will further develop and demonstrate a number of innovative solutions based upon the two previous projects and the work will build upon already ongoing mutually beneficial collaboration, established communication paths and a considerable amount of mutual trust built upon years of collaboration in international project environments.

The key aspects for this proposal, FR8HUB, is the emphasis on increasing the efficiency in the nodes, hubs and terminals in the railway system for freight and to continue development in freight locomotives of the future. FR8HUB answers to the member call for Shift2Rail IP5 AWP 17 and thereby propose activities in new development areas together with continuation of progress in Technical Demonstrators (TD) started in AWP 15. To succeed with implementation of technologies developed within Shift2Rail IP5, FR8HUB will also initiate development of a strategy for implementation of relevant technologies to secure market uptake.

The Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS) will be the 5G worldwide standard for railway operational communications, conforming to European regulation as well as responding to the needs and obligations of rail organisations outside of Europe. The work on functional & technical requirements, specification & standardisation in 3GPP as well as regarding harmonised spectrum solutions is currently led by UIC, in cooperation with the whole railway sector. A major challenge is the update by European Railway Agency of the Technical Specifications for Interoperability of Control Command and Signalling (CCS TSI) by the end of 2022 with a full description of FRMCS with respect to interoperability functions. Therefore, the 5GRAIL project aims to verify the first set of FRMCS specifications and standards (FRMCS V1) by developing and testing prototypes of the FRMCS ecosystem. The validation of the latest available railway-relevant 5G specifications will be achieved through cross-border emulation trials covering significant portions of railway operational communication requirements and including the core technological innovations for rail expected from 5G release 16 and pre-release 17. The project will first define functional tests and then work towards the development and evaluation of prototypes, for both on-board and infrastructure, including vital (ETCS, ATO) and essential (voice specific services, TCMS and video) applications. Prototypes will be then tested in simulated and real environments, with pilots in labs and in the field rolled out in various European sites (France, Hungary and Germany), to ensure compliancy and validation for FRMCS specifications, standards and performance, and consequently guarantee the time to market for FRMCS deployments, planned for 2025 as per European timeline. 5GRAIL will finally deliver test report conclusions to potentially update FRMCS V1 specifications and to identify technical constraints related to implementation issues.

According to the ERAccording to the ERA 2015 Report on ERTMS Longer Term Perspective, GNSS could prove a game changer for the European railway network by enabling a significant reduction of trackside equipment and by improving localisation performance. The conclusions of the STARS project have confirmed this potential. However, fusion with other sensors will be necessary to mitigate the known impact of local effects on GNSS performance. Capitalising on the achievements of EC and GSA funded projects, collaborating railway companies, i.e. SBB, DB and SNCF, would like to propose the project CLUG. This project will perform a mission analysis/needs identification and a preliminary feasibility study of an on-board localisation unit with the following characteristics: > failsafe on-board multi-sensor localisation unit consisting of a navigation core (IMU, tachometer, etc.) brought in reference using GNSS, track map and a minimal number of reference points; > on-board continuous localisation system that provides location, speed and other dynamics of the train; > operational and interoperable across the entire European rail network; > compatible with the current ERTMS TSI or with its future evolutions. To achieve its objectives,the CLUG's management and the design and development of the localization unit will follow agile processes taking into account former projects results – especially STARS – as well as observations resulting from new test campaigns. The CLUG consortium comprises railway companies (SNCF, DB Netz and SBB), railway signaling industries (CAF and Siemens), navigation specialists (Airbus Defense & Space, Naventik, FDC), a research institute (ENAC) and a certification expert (Navcert). Ultimately, this project is the key enabling technology for the future-proof development of train digitalisation and automation to respond to the increased mobility needs of all European citizen and goods by leveraging the train, a green safe and efficient means of transport.