After the success of the first two international IEEE VTS Motor Vehicles Challenges launched in 2016 at Hangzhou, China, and in 2017 at Belfort, France during the IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference (VPPC), this paper proposes the technical framework of the third challenge. For the edition of 2019 the challenge is focused on a dual-mode locomotive. The locomotive is powered either from a DC overhead line through a pantograph or using an on-board fuel cell with battery and supercapacitors. By taking into account the operational costs the challenge issue is to propose an Energy Management Strategy (EMS) to minimize the consumption of the electricity network and hydrogen; and to increase the lifetime of the fuel cell and energy storage system. The locomotive model will be provided to the participants using Matlab-Simulink software. Both industrial and academic teams are welcomed to propose their own EMS. The participants with top scoring will be invited to present their results in a special session at the 2019 IEEE VPPC.