Skip to main content
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.

Click here for more information

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 "N" (296)

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

Night time

SMS Safety Culture Human and Organisational Factor

Directive

Directive 2003/88/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 November 2003 concerning certain aspects of the organisation of working time

Night worker

SMS Safety Culture Human and Organisational Factor

Directive

Directive 2003/88/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 November 2003 concerning certain aspects of the organisation of working time

NIP

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

NIS

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

NIST

International Standard

EU Technical Document

CEN CENELEC ABBRAVIATION ACRONYM 2025

NL

Operation

TSI

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/773 of 16 May 2019 on the technical specification for interoperability relating to the operation and traffic management subsystem of the rail system within the European Union and repealing Decision 2012/757/EU

NL

ERTMS

ERA Technical Document

Technical Document ERTMS Operational Principles and Rules ERA_ERTMS_OPE_AppA_5 / V 5.0 on 09.04.2019

NL

ERTMS

Technical Document

ERTMS/ETCS - Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations - version : 4.0.0 - date 05/07/2023

nl

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

NL

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

NMF

International Standard

EU Technical Document

CEN CENELEC ABBRAVIATION ACRONYM 2025

nmi

EU Policy

Glossary

Glossary for transport statistics - 6TH EDITION 2026

Latest release

NMVOC

EU Policy

Glossary

Glossary for transport statistics - 6TH EDITION 2026

NNI

International Standard

EU Technical Document

CEN CENELEC ABBRAVIATION ACRONYM 2025

NNTR

RNE Glossary

Glossary

RNE Glossary - NS_CID_Glossary_2025

NNTR

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

NO

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

No GSMR coverage

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

No power mode

ERTMS

Technical Document

ERTMS/ETCS - Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations - version : 4.0.0 - date 05/07/2023

No regrets level

EU Policy

Glossary

The Social Costs of Transport - February 1997