Page 88 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 5

Michel Ruesen. Jaime Tamarit.

1. The demonstration of the feasibility of the Railway interoperability in the
nineties (EMSET)

In the middle of the nineties, Head of DG TREN Mr. Edigio Leonardi was commissioned with full
political support for the consolidation of the interoperability of the Trans European Network for
Railways. He decided to close the pure paper work launching a project within the Fourth
Framework Program with the aim of demonstrating at real scale the feasibility of Railway

Interoperability by the deployment of ERTMS. Spain offered the new high-speed line MadridSevilla
to perform the experimental demonstration. 40 Km of this line between La Sagra and Mora
stations and the CEDEX railway laboratories where allocated to this project, of EMSET acronym
(European Madrid – Sevilla Eurocab Test). This project carried out under the umbrella of the
ERTMS Users Group took place between the years 1.994 and 2.000.
This project was performed under the technical supervision of the European Commission,
represented by Mr. Antonio Colaço, Mr. Emmanuel Parent de Curzon and Mr. Claudio Traverso.
The main outcomes from this project where the following four:
I. The signalling companies of UNISIG, in a precompetitive phase, found a neutral place, of
highest quality, to perform cross tests, fundamental for interoperability consolidation.
II. The UNISIG companies where able to cooperate closely at technical level producing a
reference test lab constituted by 37 tools. This lab at CEDEX was later the seed for the
reference laboratories, accredited for the certification of ERTMS Constituents.

III. Before testing on the line, the cross test between two companies going to the line was
previously debugged in the CEDEX laboratory. Consequently, there were no incidents with
the commercial traffic during more than one year of the tests on line. Lesson learned: When
putting a commercial project in service, debug the project in the laboratory before starting
deployment of equipment on the track.
IV. At the end of this project, the ERTMS Users Group, UIC and RENFE delivered in Madrid to the
European Commissioner for Transport, Ms. Loyola del Palacio the first version of the System
Requirements Specification. The SRS version delivered was the 2.0.0 .

2. The first consolidation of the technical specification (Pilot Lines): Facing the
first difficulties

After the experimental feasibility test carried out in EMSET, the technical specifications were not
yet backed by the feedback of the experience of the commercial projects. The first commercial
project was the Spanish High Speed Line Madrid – Lérida (460 Km), awarded to the French
Compagnie de Signaux, later acquired by ANSALDO.

To get feedback from first commercial operation, the ERTMS Users Group, with the support of
the European Commission, started the deployment of ERTMS pilot lines in the six countries of
the group plus Austria, Switzerland and Vienna.
Mr. Antonio Colaço supervised technically the pilot experiences. The main difficulties faced
along this phase were the following:
I. UNISIG delivered a version of the System Requirement Specification containing hundreds
of the so-called “Designer Choices”. A designer choice was a requirement not affecting
interoperability, of free election by the project designer. This approach introduced a great
uncertainty in the certification process. The Steering Committee of UNISIG named them also
“Don’t care” requirements.

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