The established specialist conference is to take place face-to-face again this time, as always in English under the title “Fire Protection of Rolling Stock”. ” Attendees will discover regulatory updates,” says the organizer Arena, ” emerging rail developments across the globe, and technology advancing the industry, gaining new ideas and inspiration to take back to their organisations to improve overall safety.”
Traditionally, lectures on research and legal regulations as well as presentations from manufacturers alternate with user reports from railway companies at the conference. Much is of particular interest to operators of infrastructure and passenger trains. But the lecture on security concepts in workshops and depots of the Swiss SBB should also be enlightening for the cargo and logistics sector. An engineer from the Dutch State Railways NS will weigh up whether it is cheaper to modernize existing trains or to purchase new ones from the point of view of fire protection requirements, sustainability and costs. And a fire protection manager from the French SNCF will provide an overview of current regulations such as ISO TC269, EN 45545-3, -4 and -6.
The German company Fogtec will also be among the speakers and participants in the accompanying exhibition. It specializes in fire-fighting systems using high-pressure water mist, the so-called WN-BBA. In November 2021 Fogtec was able to report the successful completion of the ten-year research project SOLIT2, which was funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology by resolution of the German Bundestag and, in addition to Fogtec, the University of Bochum, STUVA, Bung Ingenieure, FOGTEC, IFAB, TÜV Süd and IDF merged. The potential of water-based fire protection was scientifically proven.
Fogtec also uses a high-pressure water mist fire-fighting system for the diesel-electric motors in the underfloor area of the AT300 trains of the British Intercity Express Program (IEP) on order from Hitachi. Fogtec is also working intensively on fire extinguishing for Li-ion batteries in vehicles. Fire tests in climatic chambers have now even shown that high-pressure nozzles specially developed for this application can not only extinguish a battery fire, but can even prevent the flashover of fire on directly adjacent battery modules.
Further information about the Berlin conference “Fire Protection of Rolling Stock” is available from the link: https://www.arena-international.com/fprs/agenda. Interested parties can register there and non-participants can order the conference documents in order to still be up to date with the latest knowledge. hfs
