Standards Development

Scope

This document applies to railbound machines and other vehicles - referred to as machines - working exclusively on the railway (utilizing friction adhesion between the rail and rail wheels) but including machines that in working position are partly supported on the ballast or the formation and used for construction, maintenance and inspection of track, structures, infrastructure and fixed electric traction equipment. This document applies to machines that are intended to operate signalling and control systems.

NOTE 1 Other rail mounted railway maintenance and infrastructure inspection machines are dealt with in other European Standards, see Technical Report CEN/TR 17498:2020.

This document specifies the significant hazards, hazardous situations and events common to rail bound machines and arising due their use on railways when they are used as intended or under conditions of misuse which are reasonably foreseeable, see Clause 4.

This document specifies the common hazards, in normal circumstances, during running, assembly and installation, commissioning, use (including setting, programming, and process changeover), operation, cleaning, fault finding, maintenance and de-commissioning of the machines. Additional safety measures can be required by exceptional circumstances, such as extreme ambient temperatures highly corrosive or contaminating environment; e.g. due to the presence of chemicals, and potentially explosive atmospheres.

NOTE 2 This document covers the essential health and safety requirements connected to the use of railbound machines as outlined in the Machinery Directive.

This document does not apply to the following:

— requirements for quality of the work or performance of the machine;

— use of separate equipment temporarily mounted on machines;

— operation subject to special rules, e.g. potentially explosive atmospheres;

— hazards due to natural causes, e.g. earthquake, lightning, flooding;

— working methods;

— operation in severe working conditions requiring special measures, e.g. corrosive environments, contaminating environments, strong magnetic fields;

— hazards occurring when used to handle suspended loads which may swing freely;

— autonomous mobile machines.

NOTE 3 Autonomous mobile machines are referred to as ‘autonomous mobile machinery’ in the Machinery Regulations 3.1.1 c).