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ERA Railway Terminology visual v0 featured

ERA Railway Terminology Collection

Last updated: 12 March 2026

The ERA Railway Terminology Collection gathers terms and abbreviations that are contained in the EU legal framework for railway, technical documents produced by bodies which are engaged in the development of important evolution in the railway system and other relevant glossaries.

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The file you will get by clicking the "Download the full Terminology" button below is in CSV format. To convert it to a readable Excel file:

1. Download the CSV file
2. Open a blank Excel sheet
3. Go to Data → Get Data from CSV → select the CSV file you just downloaded
4. The Excel file will be generated (without any encoding issues)

Starting with "C" (756)

ERA Railway Terminology Collection is a consultation tool, developed to support the sharing of information through the actors involved in running the Single European Railway Area (SERA). The responsibility for the correctness, completeness, accuracy, or reliability of the information in ERA RTC lays upon the authors of the definitions, as they derive from reference documents having their own preparation and approval flow. Users cannot call ERA liable for the use they make of the content. Please consider that when the collection is exported (.csv) and then printed or converted, it becomes uncontrolled.
Term Context Document Type Origin document

CES

Control-Command and Signalling

Application Guide

GUI/CCS TSI/2023 Version 1.0 17/06/2024 Guide for the application of the CCS TSI 2023/1695 In accordance with Article 19(3) of Regulation (EU) 2016/796 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2016

CESE

EU Policy

EU Technical Document

Technical document from the Publications Office of the European Union - ‘Style guide’ Coordination Interinstitutional Style Guide - version on 19.04.2022

CF

Freight

Glossary

Transport of dangerous goods. Risks Management Framework. Framework glossary v. 1.0/2018

CF

International Standard

ISO

ISO 3166 (en) - Online Browsing Platform (OBP) Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 1: Country code

CFCA

EU Policy

EU Technical Document

Technical document from the Publications Office of the European Union - ‘Style guide’ Coordination Interinstitutional Style Guide - version on 19.04.2022

CFCs

EU Policy

EU Technical Document

Technical document from the Publications Office of the European Union - ‘Style guide’ Coordination Interinstitutional Style Guide - version on 19.04.2022

CFITT

International Standard

EU Technical Document

CEN CENELEC ABBRAVIATION ACRONYM 2025

CFP

EU Policy

EU Technical Document

Technical document from the Publications Office of the European Union - ‘Style guide’ Coordination Interinstitutional Style Guide - version on 19.04.2022

CFPE

EU Policy

EU Technical Document

Technical document from the Publications Office of the European Union - ‘Style guide’ Coordination Interinstitutional Style Guide - version on 19.04.2022

CFR

ERTMS

Glossary

ERTMS Glossary

CFSP

EU Policy

EU Technical Document

Technical document from the Publications Office of the European Union - ‘Style guide’ Coordination Interinstitutional Style Guide - version on 19.04.2022

CfU

Vehicles / VA

Application Guide

Guidelines for the practical arrangements for the vehicle authorisation process - v. 2.1 on 14/02/2024

CG

International Standard

ISO

ISO 3166 (en) - Online Browsing Platform (OBP) Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 1: Country code

CGI

International Standard

EU Technical Document

CEN CENELEC ABBRAVIATION ACRONYM 2025

CGM

International Standard

EU Technical Document

CEN CENELEC ABBRAVIATION ACRONYM 2025

CGS

International Relations

Convention

Convention concerning International Carriage by Rail (COTIF) Appendix C – Regulations concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Rail (RID)

CH

International Standard

ISO

ISO 3166 (en) - Online Browsing Platform (OBP) Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 1: Country code

Chained sequence

International Standard

ISO

ISO/IEC 10026-1:1998(en) Information technology — Open Systems Interconnection — Distributed Transaction Processing — Part 1: OSI TP Model

Change (replace)

Entity in Charge of Maintenance

Application Guide

ISO 9879:2024(en) Railway applications — Rolling stock maintenance — Vocabulary

Latest release

Change control

SMS Safety Culture Human and Organisational Factor

ISO

ISO 9000:2015(en) Quality management systems — Fundamentals and vocabulary

Latest release