During July 10-12, 2017, the First International Conference on Rail Transportation (ICRT2017) was held at Wangjiang Hotel in Chengdu. The ICRT2017 has aroused extensive focuses and won tremendous positive responses among scientists, researchers, and engineers around the world in the rail transportation field. The ICRT2017 has been proven to be a great success. In the 3 days conference, 358 delegates from 24 countries attended the conference, including 102 delegates from outside China. There were 9 plenary keynote speeches and 152 oral presentations shared in the conference program.

At the closing ceremony of the conference on July 12th, 5 conference papers were selected as the best papers in three different types. Dr. Hua Chen from RTRI, Japan, was granted the best paper award for technical contribution; Dr. Georges Kouroussis from UMONS, Belgium, and Dr. Qingsong Feng from East China Jiaotong University, China, were granted the best paper awards for young professionals. Mr. Gernoth Götz from Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, and Ms. Wenshan Fang from Polytechnic de Milano, Italy, were granted the best paper awards for students. The former president of ASCE, Dr. Robert Stevens, and the conference chairman, Prof. Wanming Zhai presented the certificates and gifts to the best paper winners.

The Second International Conference on Rail Transportation (ICRT2021) was a meaningful innovation. ICRT2021 was held as a virtual-physical combined conference. During the 2 days, the conference held 9 large keynote lectures, more than 100 presentations and 2 poster sessions in parallel. This conference had received enthusiastic attention in the field of Rail Transportation all over the world. 71 world-well known experts and scholars were invited to be members of the international academic committee of this conference, including 40 delegates from 14 countries. Nearly 300 participants attended the conference on site and almost 10,000 scholars participated in the keynote lectures through the online platform. The participants shared and discussed their latest research results and gained new ideas and methods of rail transportation development.

During the closing ceremony of the conference, five conference papers were selected as the best papers. Dr. Andreas Andersson from Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, and Dr. Chao He, Tongji University, China were granted the best paper award for young scholars. Meanwhile, Mr. Rohan Kulkarni from Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, and Mr. Shuai Qu from Southwest Jiaotong University, China and Ms. Sundar Shrestha from Central Queensland University, Australia were granted the best paper awards for students.