IRJ at WDF 2025: WAYSIDE Digitalisation Forum (WDF) 2025, a three-day event focusing on the development of digital signalling, has started in Vienna, Austria. The two-yearly gathering for signalling professionals, organised by Austrian supplier Frauscher Sensor Technology, was last held in 2019, when it was interrupted by Covid and other factors.
Johann Pluy, board member at infrastructure manager, ÖBB Infrastructure, delivered the first keynote speech. “Managing a railway system in the next 10 years will be very different from how it was managed in the past 20 years,” he said. “Digitalisation is the key to make growth efficient and achievable, but to do this we need solid, long-term funding.”
Pluy added that for rail infrastructure across Europe to be significantly upgraded would require operation as a single rail network, with the same rules and standards. And in a barely-disguised dig at the disruption caused by infrastructure works in Germany, he said: “We have a neighbour that is so large it infects the whole of Europe with poor punctuality.”
Other keynote speakers included Siemens Austria CEO, Tanja Kienegger, the president of the Institution of Signal Engineers (IRSE), Bogdan Godziekjewski and Frauscher CEO, Michael Thiel.
In July, Wabtec announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Frauscher, which specialises in train detection, wayside object control, axle-counting and wheel detection solutions, in a deal worth €675m.
