Archives: Agenda

•  Overview of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) research how emerging propulsion technologies—such as battery and hydrogen systems—affect rail safety 

• Use of accident investigations and data to identify key risk scenarios (rollover, fire, water exposure, side and underframe impacts) that must be addressed for safe deployment of new onboard energy storage systems 

• Research on explosion hazards, fire/toxicity risks, crashworthiness of battery enclosures, and suppression technologies for battery‑related fires 

• Example of past research that informs current research and standards development will be given. 

• Fire safety systems must work when everything else fails: Zero tolerance for failure when safety is at risk. 

• Reliability sustained by maintenance, not only by design: From RAMS to Maintenance as Reliability, keeping protection effective over time. 

• Different fire detection sensors require different maintenance logic: Smoke, gas, aspiration, heat — different ageing, different risks. 

• Digital and AI tools enable proactive fire safety maintenance: From observation to prediction with condition-based insights using smart camera features. 

• Overview of hydrogen and battery locomotive deployments in Canada.
• Transport Canada’s research to date into fire risks on board hydrogen and battery locomotives.
• Update on the development of hydrogen and battery specifications, codes, and standards for North America.
• Review of Transport Canada’s railway wildfire safety initiatives.

• Suggestions for cross-agency collaboration and testing to raise industry standards 

• Digital tools supporting the development and testing of cutting-edge emergency responses 

• Integrating the human factor into automated procedures  

• Creating a culture of continual improvement: moving from procedures shaped by compliance to an excellence-based system

• Learning system: capturing human insights from incidents and near misses  

• Designing controls that fit real behaviour 

• Is the industry suffering from tick‑box e‑learning? Assessing the merits of scenario‑based training and how to realistically implement it

Reliable fire protection requires solutions that eliminate risks while preserving the full operational capacity of the protected electronic systems. 

• It’s “The Law”: (EU) Regulation 2024/2847 has immediate effect across the EU without need of national transposition 
• How mandatory cybersecurity requirements do apply to the whole supply chain of the Raiway Industry 
• Key obligations and timelines behind years 2026 and 2027 
• Why cybsec is crucial for validation and homologation of automatic Fire Protection Systems on Rolling Stock 
• “Strategic tools” and roadmap for compliance to legal obligations: use of SSDLC, EN 5012x, ISO 27001, IEC 62443, EN 50701