The 13th International Conference on Design and Operation in Railway Engineering (COMPRAIL 2012) will be held in the New Forest, UK. This is the latest in the very successful series of meetings which started in Frankfurt in 1987 and continued in Rome (1990), Washington (1992), Madrid (1994), Berlin (1996), Lisbon (1998), Bologna (2000), Lemnos (2002), Dresden (2004), Prague (2006), Toledo (2008) and Beijing (2010).

The conference aims to update the use of advanced systems, promoting their general awareness throughout the business management, design, manufacture and operation of railways and other emerging passenger, freight and transit systems. It emphasises the use of computer systems in advanced railway engineering.

The meeting provides a forum for engineers, planners, designers, manufacturers and operators to discuss how they can benefit from the latest developments in railway engineering.

The conference will be of interest to railway management, consultants, railway engineers (including signal and control engineers), designers of advanced train control systems and computer specialists. The meeting also attracts planners of railway network systems, manufacturers of track, rolling stock, locomotives and other ancillary equipment, who all have a common interest in the development and application of advanced techniques for the solution of problems in railway and other mass transit systems.

Conference topics include;

- Advanced train control
- Planning
- Timetable planning
- Rescheduling
- Risk management
- Safety and security
- Maglev and high-speed railways
- Traffic control and safety of high-speed railways
- Metro and other transit systems
- Communications and signalling
- Energy supply and consumption
- Driverless and automatic train operation
- Operations quality
- Computer techniques and simulations
- Railway vehicle dynamics
- Dynamics and wheel/rail interface
- Monitoring and maintenance
- Crack, damage and fatigue problems