Rust Nears Rails: First EN 50716 Railway Certification Package

Universal Signalling and the Ferrocene team announced a collaboration to build the first railway certification package for Rust under EN 50716, opening the language to safety-critical rail deployment.

Universal Signalling Ltd, a Derby-based railway signaling company, and the team behind Ferrocene, the quality-managed, safety-qualified Rust toolchain, announced a collaboration to develop the first railway certification package for Rust in compliance with EN 50716. The stated goal is to establish a certification pathway for using Rust in safety-critical railway applications. Ferrocene will provide a Rust integration layer so Universal Signalling's applications can access QNX functionality on QNX OS for Safety, plus qualification materials for the toolchain and required libraries. The qualification package, including all required certification materials, is expected in an upcoming Ferrocene release.

Railway signaling carries some of the most stringent software safety and reliability requirements in any industry, and until now Rust lacked a certification route for deploying in that environment. Universal Signalling CTO Dr. Nicholas Wright said Rust's unique features make it the obvious choice for railway safety applications, but without adequate certification and qualification it cannot be deployed in real-world applications. Ferrocene Managing Director Felix Gilcher added that using Rust in this environment goes beyond the language itself, requiring a robust, qualified toolchain and certification-supporting processes — the foundation this partnership aims to build for the whole rail industry.

Ferrocene began at Ferrous Systems GmbH in 2019 and has evolved into a quality-managed, TÜV SÜD-qualified, open-source Rust toolchain available under MIT or Apache 2.0 licenses. According to the announcement, it is qualified for safety-related development per ISO 26262 (ASIL D), IEC 61508 (SIL 3) and IEC 62304 (Class C), and supports certification efforts toward SIL 4 and DO-178C (DAL C), with qualified targets including Linux, QNX, bare metal on Arm and x86-64, and choice of RTOS. Universal Signalling, founded in 2022, already has contracts to install its technology on over 100 miles of railway in Wales, according to Business Wire, and its products are primarily developed in Rust.

The resulting certification package is intended to include all the necessary elements to enable the first Rust-based railway product to achieve certification — a milestone that could unlock Rust across an industry that Universal Signalling says has grown accustomed to decades-long delivery cycles. Universal Signalling's novel architectures aim to deliver signaling projects in days rather than decades, and the company argues the railway should use the best tools for the job.