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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 "H" (138)

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

Heavy rail

EU Policy

Glossary

Glossary for transport statistics - 6TH EDITION 2026

Latest release

Heavy rail infrastructure

Vehicles / VA

Application Guide

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

Heavy rail passenger

EU Policy

Glossary

Glossary for transport statistics - 6TH EDITION 2026

Latest release

Hedonic pricing

EU Policy

Glossary

The Social Costs of Transport - February 1997

Height of check rail

Infrastructure

TSI

Commission Regulation (EU) No 1299/2014 of 18 November 2014 on the technical specifications for interoperability relating to the ‘infrastructure’ subsystem of the rail system in the European Union

Height of platform

Infrastructure

Regulation

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/777 of 16 May 2019 on the common specifications for the register of railway infrastructure and repealing Implementing Decision 2014/880/EU

hEN

International Standard

EU Technical Document

CEN CENELEC ABBRAVIATION ACRONYM 2025

Hermes

Withdrawn

Application Guide

TAP TSI Annex B.52 Reservation application_guide - version 1.0 of 06/12/2013

Latest release

Hermes community

Withdrawn

Application Guide

TAP TSI Annex B.52 Reservation application_guide - version 1.0 of 06/12/2013

Latest release

Hermetically closed tank

International Relations

Convention

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

Heuristic-hazard

International Standard

ISO

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

Heuristic-mix

International Standard

ISO

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

HFC

Withdrawn

Glossary

Glossary for transport statistics - 6TH EDITION 2026

Latest release

High sided wagon

EU Policy

Glossary

Glossary for transport statistics - 6TH EDITION 2026

Latest release

High speed passenger services

SERA_EU Transport

Directive

Directive 2012/34/EU of the Parliament and of the Council of 21 November 2012 establishing a single European railway area (recast)

High voltage components

Interoperability

Decision

Commission Decision of 30 November 2009 on the reference document referred to in Article 27(4) of Directive 2008/57/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the interoperability of the rail system within the Community. (2009/965/EC)

High-cube container

Freight

Glossary

Terminology on Combined Transport from Economic Commission for Europe (UN/ECE). Prepared by the UN/ECE, the European Conference of Ministers of Transport (ECMT) and the European Commission (EC). UNITED NATIONS - New York and Geneva, 2001

High-cube container

EU Policy

Glossary

Glossary for transport statistics - 6TH EDITION 2026

Latest release

High-power recharging

Energy

Regulation

Regulation (EU) 2023/1804 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 September 2023 on the deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure, and repealing Directive 2014/94/EU

High-speed rail

EU Policy

Glossary

Eurostat Transport Glossary on web release November 2024