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ERA Railway Terminology visual v0 featured

ERA Railway Terminology Collection

Last updated: 5 December 2025.

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 "R" (582)

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

Relevant and reasoned objection

Data Protection

Regulation

Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC

Relevant date

Vehicles / VA

Regulation

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2018/545 of 4 April 2018 establishing practical arrangements for the railway vehicle authorisation and railway vehicle type authorisation process pursuant to Directive (EU) 2016/797 of the European Parliament and of the Council

Relevant date

Safety / SSC-SA

Regulation

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2018/763 of 9 April 2018 establishing practical arrangements for issuing single safety certificates to railway undertakings pursuant to Directive (EU) 2016/798 of the European Parliament and of the Council, and repealing Commission Regulation (EC) No 653/2007

Relevant hazardous equipment

Freight

Glossary

Handbook of scenarios for assessing major chemical accident risks JRC106029 - Ed. 2017

Reliability

EU Policy

Decision

Commission Decision (EU) 2021/2121 of 6 July 2020 on records management and archives

Reliability

ERTMS

Technical Document

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

Reliability

EU Policy

Regulation

Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2009 on European statistics and repealing Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 1101/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the transmission of data subject to statistical confidentiality to the Statistical Office of the European Communities, Council Regulation (EC) No 322/97 on Community Statistics, and Council Decision 89/382/EEC, Euratom establishing a Committee on the Statistical Programmes of the European Communities

Reliability

International Standard

ISO

ISO 22163:2023(en) Railway applications — Railway quality management system — ISO 9001:2015 and specific requirements for application in the railway sector

Reliability - availability requirements

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)

Reliability of main brake system functionality

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)

Reliability of parking brake

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)

Reliability of stopping distance

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)

Reliability of traction/braking interlocking

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)

Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, Safety (RAMS)

Telematics Applications for Freight

TSI

Commission Regulation (EU) No 1305/2014 of 11 December 2014 on the technical specification for interoperability relating to the telematics applications for freight subsystem of the rail system in the European Union and repealing the Regulation (EC) No 62/2006

Relief facilities

RNE Glossary

Glossary

RNE Glossary - NS_CID_Glossary_2025

Relocation

ERTMS

Technical Document

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

Relying party

EU Policy

Regulation

Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market and repealing Directive 1999/93/EC

Remaining capacity / unplanned capacity

RNE Glossary

Glossary

RNE Glossary - NS_CID_Glossary_2025

Remaining Dwell Time

ERTMS

Glossary

ERTMS/ATO Glossary - version 2 on 05.07.2023

Remanufactured IBC

International Relations

Convention

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