The International Fire Academy has published the second edition of its leaflets on «Firefighting Operations in Railway Tunnels». They contain the newly formulated safety rules for Swiss fire services when responding to incidents on railway facilities. We therefore recommend that only this new edition be used for on-site training in Switzerland.
«Track closed» instead of «railwaytraffic has been discontinued»
On the initiative of Swiss railway infrastructure managers, the safety rules for fire service operations on railway facilities in Switzerland were reformulated in 2024. The German term «Betrieb eingestellt» (service suspended) was replaced by «Gleis(e) gesperrt» (track(s) closed) and thus adapted to the language regulations of the railway company. We have provided detailed information about this change and the reasons behind it in the magazine article «Newly formulated safety rule for operations on railway infrastructure in Switzerland». The training in our crew and officer courses for railway operations has been adapted accordingly.
To support consistent use of the new wording, the information on the practical implementation of safety rules during operations has also been updated on the pages on basic tactical patterns.
Binding training basis for Switzerland
The safety regulations are a binding training basis for Swiss fire services. We therefore recommend that fire services only use the new edition of the leaflets in their training. Similar safety regulations exist for fire services in other countries, such as Germany and Austria. However, different technical terms are used by the railway managers. Here, we recommend coordinating the terms to be used with the responsible parties at the railway managers to reduce the risk of misunderstandings during operations.
Leaflets are now available in their second edition
The updated leaflets entitled «Firefighting operations in railway tunnels» can be downloaded free of charge as PDF files for on-site training from our website www.ifa-swiss.ch in the «Tunnels» section under «Knowledge». These files are particularly suitable for presenting the updated leaflets.
The printed leaflets have proven their worth in practical training. These can be ordered in the same section under the Publications menu item.
In the «Knowledge» section, we have also made our leaflets «Firefighting operations in road tunnels» and «Operations in Underground Car Parks» available to fire services in German, English, French and Italian.
