European Union Agency for Railways

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)

Download the full Terminology

Starting with "R" (637)

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

RDD

Vehicles / VA

Application Guide

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

RDF

Infrastructure

Application Guide

Guide on the application of the common specifications of the register of Infrastructure - v. 3.1.0 on 31.03.2025

RE

Vehicles / VA

Application Guide

EVR Guidelines – application guide 013PPS1131-01 - V 8.0 on 11.12.2020

RE

Registers

Decision

Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2018/1614 of 25 October 2018 laying down specifications for the vehicle registers referred to in Article 47 of Directive (EU) 2016/797 of the European Parliament and of the Council and amending and repealing Commission Decision 2007/756/EC

RE

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

RE

ERTMS

Glossary

ERTMS/ATO Glossary - version 2 on 05.07.2023

Re-routing option

RNE Glossary

Glossary

RNE Glossary - NS_CID_Glossary_2025

Re-routing scenario

RNE Glossary

Glossary

RNE Glossary - NS_CID_Glossary_2025

Reach stacker

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

Reach stacker

EU Policy

Glossary

Glossary for transport statistics - 6TH EDITION 2026

Reactivation of authorisation

Vehicles / VA

Decision

Commission Implementing Decision 2011/665/EU of 4 October 2011 on the European register of authorised types of railway vehicles

Read-only signal

International Standard

ISO

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

Readly available data

Telematics Applications for Passenger and Freight Services

Regulation

Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2023 on harmonised rules on fair access to and use of data and amending Regulation (EU) 2017/2394 and Directive (EU) 2020/1828

Latest release

Ready signal

International Standard

ISO

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

Ready-to-commit state

International Standard

ISO

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

Real time

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

Realisation identifier

Control-Command and Signalling

Regulation

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1695 of 10 August 2023 on the technical specification for interoperability relating to the control-command and signalling subsystems of the rail system in the European Union and repealing Regulation (EU) 2016/919

Rear and side view

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)

Reasonable accommodation

Persons with Reduced Mobility

Decision

Council Decision of 26 November 2009 concerning the conclusion, by the European Community, of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Reasonable profit

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)