Thirty-five years ago, a small international team sat down to write the first specification for what would become the European Train Control System. Bogdan Godziejewski was one of them. So when he says ETCS rollout has been disappointingly slow, it carries the weight of someone who has followed the system from its very first idea to today.

Bogdan is the immediate past president of the Institution of Railway Signal Engineering (IRSE), Rail Director and Fellow at Mott MacDonald, with more than 40 years of international experience across the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Denmark, the USA and beyond. Between 1992 and 1996 he worked at the European Rail Research Institute on the first ETCS system requirements specification. Few people are better placed to take stock of where ETCS now stands.

In this conversation we cover why deployment has crawled in the big countries while smaller ones forged ahead, what Belgium did differently to fit its entire network in record time, and why a countrywide vision matters more than the technology itself. We get into repeatability, approvals and testing as the real levers of an industrialised rollout. We also turn to Bogdan's IRSE presidency and his Generation Unlimited theme: bringing younger people into the discipline and building bridges between generations.

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Chris Gibb spent 45 years in high-profile positions across the British railways. He knows what a successful railway operation looks like — and right now he is publicly challenging the plans for High Speed 2 (HS2).

The issue is not the construction. It does not even impact the High Speed Rail service between London and Birmingham, what most people think HS2 is about. It is the impact of the new HS2 train fleet that continues around Birmingham on the West Coast Main Line to the North. Chris foresees a substantial reduction in capacity from today's fleet travelling up North, at times when more, not less, capacity will be needed. And he tries to do something about it before procurement decisions cement a future capacity shortfall. It is a lesson about long-term planning decisions and their consequences.

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When it comes to advancing your understanding of modern train control technologies, nothing beats world-class training. I've partnered with Informa Connect Academy to create what I believe is the most comprehensive portfolio of online training courses in advanced signalling available anywhere. Find out more here: https://docfranktraining.com/courses