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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)

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

ATO Inhibition Zone

ERTMS

Glossary

ERTMS/ATO Glossary - version 2 on 05.07.2023

ATO On-board

ERTMS

Glossary

ERTMS/ATO Glossary - version 2 on 05.07.2023

ATO Operated Train

ERTMS

Glossary

ERTMS/ATO Glossary - version 2 on 05.07.2023

ATO Operational Speed Profile

ERTMS

Glossary

ERTMS/ATO Glossary - version 2 on 05.07.2023

ATO System version

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

ATO Trackside

ERTMS

Glossary

ERTMS/ATO Glossary - version 2 on 05.07.2023

ATO-OB

ERTMS

Glossary

ERTMS/ATO Glossary - version 2 on 05.07.2023

ATO-TS

ERTMS

Glossary

ERTMS/ATO Glossary - version 2 on 05.07.2023

ATP

ERTMS

Glossary

ERTMS Glossary

ATP

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

ATP

ERTMS

Technical Document

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

ATP

Safety / SSC-SA

Application Guide

Implementation Guidance for CSIs - v. 6.0 on 24.05.2023

Latest release

ATS

ERTMS

Glossary

ERTMS/ATO Glossary - version 2 on 05.07.2023

ATSM

ERTMS

Glossary

ERTMS/ATO Glossary - version 2 on 05.07.2023

Attempted suicide

Safety / SSC-SA

Directive

Directive (EU) 2016/798 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2016 on railway safety (recast)

Attempted suicide

EU Policy

Glossary

Glossary for transport statistics - 5TH EDITION 2019

Attributing reservation system

Telematics Applications for Passenger

Application Guide

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

Attributing system

Telematics Applications for Passenger

Application Guide

TAP TSI Annex B.50 Timetable application_guide - version 1.0 of 06/12/2013

Attributing system

Telematics Applications for Passenger

Application Guide

TAP TSI Annex B.51 Tariff application_guide - version 1.0 of 06/12/2013

Attributing system

Telematics Applications for Passenger

TSI

Commission Regulation (EU) No 454/2011 of 5 May 2011 on the technical specification for interoperability relating to the subsystem ‘telematics applications for passenger services’ of the trans-European rail system