Digitalisation is rapidly reshaping how railways are monitored, managed, and maintained, and the need for shared understanding across borders has never been greater. Against this backdrop, the Wayside Digitalisation Forum 2025 in Vienna, Austria offered a dedicated platform for infrastructure managers, suppliers, and technical specialists to explore the latest developments in digital signalling and wayside technology.
Bringing together a broad mix of international expertise, the event set out to compare practical experiences, examine emerging standards, and discuss the organisational changes needed to support modern, interoperable systems. What followed was three days of open dialogue, technical depth, and forward-looking collaboration.
Spanning three busy days from 15 to 17 October, the forum focussed on how digital technologies are reshaping signalling systems and wayside infrastructure, drawing major rail operators, technology providers, system integrators, and specialists from across the globe. Delegates emphasised the benefit of exchanging practical insights from digitalisation projects worldwide, with particular attention to cross-border standardisation and the reduction of system complexity.
Inspiring interactions
Technical sessions were structured around multiple themes, covering digital signalling, system architecture, predictive maintenance, and cross-system integration. Presenters from Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia shared a wide range of experiences, giving the audience a global view of the hurdles and possibilities of digital signalling modernisation. Each programme stream included generous breaks, creating ample space for informal conversations and networking.
Highlights of the event included:
- Digital Interlocking as a platform for ETCS rollout, featuring insights, from DB InfraGO’s Donauwörth project amongst others.
- EULYNX and modular signalling architectures, addressing how standardisation enables a flexible, interoperable future, emphasised in a presentation from the EULYNX consortium and others.
- Predictive maintenance and digital twins, presented by ÖBB and international technology partners.
- Monitoring and diagnostics, with contributions from Network Rail, KONUX, and others.
- Operational value through digital diagnostics, including best practices from Infrabel.
Reducing compexity
One of the most popular topics throughout the forum was how standardisation – particularly through initiatives like EULYNX – can make signalling systems interoperable across borders while reducing engineering and operational complexity.
“We had challenging discussions about this in both panels,” said Michael Leining, managing director at Nextrail, who moderated the two panel discussion sessions on stage.
“System integration was the other big topic that we were speaking about,” he added. ”There are challenges for all the infrastructure managers as well as suppliers to handle system integration when it comes to standardisation.”
All participants emphasised that digital transformation requires not only technological advances but also organisational and regulatory alignment.
A signal of success
The Wayside Digitalisation Forum 2025 was a resounding success – a testament to the sector’s collective commitment to progress – and fostered an exceptional atmosphere of collaboration and openness.
Participants valued the technical depth of the sessions as well as the cross-industry networking opportunities the event presented, that will help accelerate global efforts to digitalise railway infrastructure.
The message from Vienna was clear: the digital transformation of rail signalling is well underway, and collaboration across industries and borders is the key to making it a sustainable success.
“With WDF Vienna 2025, our ambition was to bring the global wayside community together and elevate the conversation on digital signalling,” said Christian Pucher, programme director at WDF.
“The engagement, debate, and openness we experienced exceeded all expectations. The next challenge is to translate ideas into action – and shaping the future of signalling – together.”