EULYNX attracts railways and innovative industry EULYNX provides the stable basis for the digitalisation of the railways; its potential is recognised both beyond Europe and beyond signalling.

Frankfurt, September 24th, 2018 -- EULYNX is already well known to Innotrans visitors. In 2016 ERA Executive Director Dr. Josef Doppelbauer gave his key note to the EULYNX event on Innotrans. Signalling supply industry and senior railway executives responsible for Control Command and Signalling systems (CCS) had a lively exchange about the EULYNX standards. Already at this point in time, requests for more information were raised on a global level.

What is EULYNX? A community of 13 EU railway infrastructure managers (IM) aiming to standardise the interfaces present in the CCS environment. Starting from the systems as they are today, digitalisation requires to disconnect the lifecycles of , RBCs and control centres from the field elements like point, , train detection system, light signal, LEU and other signalling sub-systems. These interfaces have now been standardised in the EULYNX reference architecture. The EULYNX standards are available for free download on www.eulynx.eu.

The comprehensive EULYNX interface specification standards are developed with the use of the system modelling language SysML. Thus, the weaknesses and ambiguity of a natural language in technical specification have been overcome by using formal specification. The EULYNX interface specifications are an inclusive standard, incorporating and managing variability of functions that differ from IM to IM due to different legal environments.

In the past standards have been perceived as being either restrictive and hampering innovation or weak and of limited use. EULYNX standards unleash the full potential of IP telegram standardisation in containing core data of all IMs and specific data for each individual IM. The sum of all data makes the standard protocol per interface. EULYNX standards foster modularity and interchange ability of both interlockings and field elements across any suppliers. The vision of systems based on distributed intelligence using IP-networks has become a reality.

At Innotrans 2018, the EULYNX members invited the railway audiences to a demonstration “Seeing is believing – The signalling strategy for Europe” and provided a real digital with field elements of different suppliers. Already during day 1 it became clear, that the EULYNX digital interlocking attracts railways and signalling industry from Europe and beyond. High ranking delegations and visitors from Korea, Taiwan, Japan, China and India discussed the EULYNX approach whilst seeing the digital interlocking in full operation. Representatives of the Ministry of Indian Railways and its supply industry spent considerable time with EULYNX at Innotrans. And of course, the who’s who of the EU railways, industry, organisations and academia visited EULYNX during the entire fair. Many colleagues specialized on CCS and IT, and also from other domains, took the opportunity of getting first-hand information and seeing the digital interlocking in operation. ProRail, Hima, Movares, Pilz, Sweco, VRS and Thales provided the equipment on display and were available for demonstration and detailed questions.

Page | 1

The CCS community is waiting for Baseline 3 of EULYNX standards to be published in December. The industry is keen on the return of experiences from on-going EULYNX implementations in Norway, Germany, Netherlands, Luxembourg and other upcoming projects based on the EULYNX standards.

The EULYNX reference architecture has also inspired the future evolution of the digital railway system: After digitalisation of current functions, technical innovations like 5G, automation, traffic management, fibre optic sensing, etc. will drive the further evolution of the EULYNX architecture. Managing migration will become key, and therefore the future architecture will encompass ETCS evolution and automatic train operation. The target architecture for the full digital railway system of the future is therefore called “Reference CCS Architecture” (RCA), and is jointly coordinated by the ERTMS Users group (EUG) and the EULYNX Consortium. EU representative bodies, ERA and Shift2Rail recognise the importance of the RCA initiative that adds to the EULYNX architecture new functions and technical innovations.

EULYNX provides the stable basis for the digitalisation of the railways and its potential is recognised both beyond Europe and beyond signalling. The EULYNX members are keen on proceeding with implementation and are increasingly focussing their attention on testing. References Labs are being prepared by EULYNX members in order to facilitate the proof of conformity of products with EULYNX standards and to check safe integration before implementation.

EULYNX started to cater for the needs of European railways, and has proven its potential during Innotrans 2018 for becoming a success story also beyond Europe.

More information is available on: https://www.eulynx.eu

Page | 2