Cross-acceptance of safety approvals in the rail industry: a manufacturer´s viewpoint

The basic principles and lessons learned from the cross-acceptance of signalling equipment in that era are presented here for typical products of the rail automation division of Siemens transportation systems in accordance with pre-CENELEC era regulation. The EN 50126/1/, EN 50128/2/ and EN 50129/3/ standards describe the requirements for the safety-related hardware and overall system. The future challenges facing us are: the use of a mix of railway equipment conforming to the various standards, the adoption of a common approach and a harmonisation of the safety requirements.