Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DACFIT (DAC: Freight’s intelligent transformation)
Reporting period: 2024-10-15 to 2025-10-14
Digital Automatic Coupling (DAC) represents a cornerstone innovation for the transformation of rail freight towards a fully digital, automated and sustainable system across Europe. Beyond a purely technological upgrade, DAC is a critical enabler for achieving the objectives of the European Green Deal and the ambitions set out in the Digitalisation Package 2022, by improving efficiency, safety, interoperability and environmental performance in rail freight operations.
The deployment of DAC is being advanced through the European DAC Delivery Programme (EDDP), an integral element of Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking (EU-Rail) and its multiannual work programme. Within this framework, DAC plays a central role in Europe’s Rail flagship project FP5 TRANS4M-R, specifically within the workstream on Fully Digitalised Freight Train Operations (FDFTO), which focuses on enabling and scaling up DAC-based operations across the European rail freight system.
Against this strategic and political backdrop, the DACFIT project provides targeted and operationally critical support to the EDDP and the EU-Rail Joint Undertaking. DACFIT brings together a network of recognised experts from technical, managerial and operational domains to generate robust evidence, implementation concepts and actionable plans that are essential for the successful migration towards DAC.
The project’s core objective is to enable and de-risk the implementation of the EDDP DAC migration roadmap. To achieve this, DACFIT addresses key challenges along the entire pathway to impact, including quantitative and qualitative fleet analyses, retrofit engineering concepts, planning of retrofit capacity, and the development of comprehensive implementation and deployment plans. By systematically linking fleet readiness, technical feasibility and industrial capacity, DACFIT ensures that DAC deployment can progress at scale and within realistic timeframes.
Through its results, DACFIT directly contributes to accelerating the transition to a digitalised, automated and sustainable European rail freight network. The project supports evidence-based decision-making at European level and lays the groundwork for large-scale DAC roll-out across thousands of freight wagons, thereby strengthening the competitiveness of rail freight, reducing operational costs, and contributing to substantial CO2 emissions reductions. In this way, DACFIT translates strategic policy objectives into concrete, implementable actions and supports Europe’s long-term transport, climate and digital transformation goals.
The deployment of DAC is being advanced through the European DAC Delivery Programme (EDDP), an integral element of Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking (EU-Rail) and its multiannual work programme. Within this framework, DAC plays a central role in Europe’s Rail flagship project FP5 TRANS4M-R, specifically within the workstream on Fully Digitalised Freight Train Operations (FDFTO), which focuses on enabling and scaling up DAC-based operations across the European rail freight system.
Against this strategic and political backdrop, the DACFIT project provides targeted and operationally critical support to the EDDP and the EU-Rail Joint Undertaking. DACFIT brings together a network of recognised experts from technical, managerial and operational domains to generate robust evidence, implementation concepts and actionable plans that are essential for the successful migration towards DAC.
The project’s core objective is to enable and de-risk the implementation of the EDDP DAC migration roadmap. To achieve this, DACFIT addresses key challenges along the entire pathway to impact, including quantitative and qualitative fleet analyses, retrofit engineering concepts, planning of retrofit capacity, and the development of comprehensive implementation and deployment plans. By systematically linking fleet readiness, technical feasibility and industrial capacity, DACFIT ensures that DAC deployment can progress at scale and within realistic timeframes.
Through its results, DACFIT directly contributes to accelerating the transition to a digitalised, automated and sustainable European rail freight network. The project supports evidence-based decision-making at European level and lays the groundwork for large-scale DAC roll-out across thousands of freight wagons, thereby strengthening the competitiveness of rail freight, reducing operational costs, and contributing to substantial CO2 emissions reductions. In this way, DACFIT translates strategic policy objectives into concrete, implementable actions and supports Europe’s long-term transport, climate and digital transformation goals.
During the reporting period, DACFIT delivered significant technical and scientific results across work packages WP2–WP7, establishing a coherent analytical basis for the European DAC migration.
A key overarching achievement was the substantial improvement of data quality and methodological consistency. A systematic and repeatable approach for cleansing, validating and categorising European fleet data was developed, addressing known gaps and heterogeneities in existing vehicle registers and enabling reliable quantitative and spatial analyses.
Technical analyses of locomotives, freight wagons and special vehicles identified critical constraints and conversion potentials for Hybrid DAC retrofitting. Weight and structural strength were confirmed as key limiting factors for locomotives, while wagon analyses showed that more than half of the examined types are directly DAC-convertible. Limitations in existing classification schemes and documentation availability were identified as relevant risks for large-scale transferability.
A harmonised technical framework was established through the definition of DAC-specific vehicle states, technical groups and conversion actions. Material, resource, skill and infrastructure requirements for retrofit processes were assessed, providing a robust basis for capacity planning and logistics considerations.
In parallel, a consolidated European workshop database was created, forming the foundation for retrofit capacity estimation and integration into the Decision Support System (DSS).
The initial version of the DSS was successfully developed, including harmonised data formats, individual vehicle modelling and data protection-compliant processing. The system is designed to operate with realistically available data while maximising analytical value for DAC retrofit capacity planning.
Overall, the project established validated data pipelines, technical conversion models and a functional DSS framework, enabling evidence-based decision-making and supporting the scalable implementation of DAC across the European rail freight system.
A key overarching achievement was the substantial improvement of data quality and methodological consistency. A systematic and repeatable approach for cleansing, validating and categorising European fleet data was developed, addressing known gaps and heterogeneities in existing vehicle registers and enabling reliable quantitative and spatial analyses.
Technical analyses of locomotives, freight wagons and special vehicles identified critical constraints and conversion potentials for Hybrid DAC retrofitting. Weight and structural strength were confirmed as key limiting factors for locomotives, while wagon analyses showed that more than half of the examined types are directly DAC-convertible. Limitations in existing classification schemes and documentation availability were identified as relevant risks for large-scale transferability.
A harmonised technical framework was established through the definition of DAC-specific vehicle states, technical groups and conversion actions. Material, resource, skill and infrastructure requirements for retrofit processes were assessed, providing a robust basis for capacity planning and logistics considerations.
In parallel, a consolidated European workshop database was created, forming the foundation for retrofit capacity estimation and integration into the Decision Support System (DSS).
The initial version of the DSS was successfully developed, including harmonised data formats, individual vehicle modelling and data protection-compliant processing. The system is designed to operate with realistically available data while maximising analytical value for DAC retrofit capacity planning.
Overall, the project established validated data pipelines, technical conversion models and a functional DSS framework, enabling evidence-based decision-making and supporting the scalable implementation of DAC across the European rail freight system.