Led by the Infrastructure and Rolling Stock Division of the UIC Rail System Department, the Narrow-Gauge Taskforce was launched on 30 April 2024. Its goal is to bring together experts from the Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America to connect the regions, share concerns, and develop solutions.
The main needs identified were to:
- Reduce maintenance costs for both infrastructure and rolling stock
- Reduce purchasing costs for both infrastructure and rolling stock
On 19 June 2025, the Narrow-Gauge Infrastructure and Rolling Stock subgroups held a joint meeting online. These two subgroups exist to enable more efficient and focused work.
The goal of these groups is to revise the current international standards for narrow gauges to identify gaps in legislation. In 2024 and 2025:
- The Infrastructure subgroup identified key gaps in standards for narrow-gauge track applications (such as track alignment, track geometry quality, etc.).
- The Rolling Stock subgroup proposed solutions for solving coupling issues and introduced a methodology to make Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, and Safety (RAMS) and Life Cycle Cost (LCC) analysis based on the IRSs 80881 and 80882.
For the next steps:
The Infrastructure subgroup will focus on maintenance, addressing topics such as:
- Maintenance thresholds (geometric and dynamic inspections)
- General maintenance criteria (maintenance operations, frequency, processes, etc.)
- Track alignment parameters
The Infrastructure subgroup would like to invite any narrow-gauge maintenance experts who wish to share their concerns and solutions and help collect best practices on maintenance to take part.
Meanwhile, the Rolling Stock subgroup will continue to identify areas for the application of standards, facilitating interoperability where needed, and plans to focus on:
- Collecting wheel defect data
- Compiling a rolling stock inventory
