With this announcement we wish to make you interested in joining and contributing to TRain, a worldwide research effort aimed at developing a theory, a set of coordinated, integrated, theories, about the Railway Domain - ie., "all" that 'goes before' requirements, let alone computing systems development for railway applications.

We kindly refer you to a collection of some 30 web pages. They are, we believe, well-structured, and can be reached by clicking on to http://www.imm.dtu.dk/~db/colognet/train/
Web pages on "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQ) and on "Organisation" should answer most questions that you might have. If you believe you are research-wise or otherwise interested in the train effort, please consider joining.

What is the TRain Effort?
The TRain Effort is a proposal put forward for the formation, worldwide, of an Open, Free Consortium of
- railway people and institutions (companies, industries),
- academics (ie., people, researchers, scientists), and research centers, within computer & computing science and software engineering, transportation science and engineering, reliability and safety engineering, and operations research, on the subject of exploring, creating and freely propagating (publishing, on the net, etc.) a Domain Theory for the Railway Infrastructure.

Why this Train Effort?
This effort relies on four dimensions:

The Railway Industry Justification:
- IT applications (computing systems, for all aspects of railways, and especially for integrated, cross-related tactical and operational management, monitoring and control, etc) become more and more important.
- The design of these computing systems is hard, too very hard: Often fraught with cost overruns, late deliveries, and erroneous software, etc.
- Requirements for such systems are usually badly formulated.
It is claimed that a proper, widely accepted Domain Theory for Railways can help ameliorate the above situation:
- Before computing systems can be designed one must understand the requirements:
- Before requirements can be formulated one must understand the domain
Today’s computing systems for the railway infrastructure are not developed on the basis of anywhere near a reasonable understanding of the railway domain.

The Computing Science Justification:
We need a grand challenge project in order to gather enough momentum to make progress along the road to industrially scalable and useful, integrated formal techniques.

The Science Justification:
- There is no domain theory for such an important domain as that of railways.
- The natural sciences, so reveals "their name", has domain theories: Physics (mechanics, thermodynamics, electrivity), biology, etc.
- Is it not time for man-made structures to have their domain theories?

Towards a Science of Man-made Infrastructure Components:
- We deploy the name 'infrastructure' - really without knowing its deeper, possible meanings.
- Transportation is one such infrastructure component.
- There are other infrastructure components such as financial service industry, health-care, and public administration.
- It seems high time someone started!

Sociological and Psychological justification:
- It can be done.
- It is fun!