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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Disclaimer
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
Portable tank	International Relations	Convention	Convention concerning International Carriage by Rail (COTIF) Appendix C – Regulations concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Rail (RID)
POS	Withdrawn	Application Guide	TAP TSI Annex B.55 PRM assistance application_guide - version 1.0 of 06/12/2013	Latest release
POSAT	International Standard	EU Technical Document	CEN CENELEC ABBRAVIATION ACRONYM 2025
POSI	International Standard	EU Technical Document	CEN CENELEC ABBRAVIATION ACRONYM 2025
POSIX	International Standard	EU Technical Document	CEN CENELEC ABBRAVIATION ACRONYM 2025
Possession (or restriction of use)	RNE Glossary	Glossary	RNE Glossary - NS_CID_Glossary_2025
Possession, of signalling equipment	ERTMS	Technical Document	ERTMS/ETCS - Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations - version : 4.0.0 - date 05/07/2023
Post trip mode	ERTMS	Technical Document	ERTMS/ETCS - Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations - version : 4.0.0 - date 05/07/2023
Post-processing	RNE Glossary	Glossary	RNE Glossary - NS_CID_Glossary_2025
Potential limit of use	Entity in Charge of Maintenance	Application Guide	ISO 9879:2024(en) Railway applications — Rolling stock maintenance — Vocabulary	Latest release
Power head	International Standard	ISO	ISO/DIS 22575(en) Railway applications — General terms and definitions
Power output	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
Power Unit / power car / power head	Vehicles / VA	TSI	Commission Regulation (EU) No 1302/2014 of 18 November 2014 concerning a technical specification for interoperability relating to the rolling stock — locomotives and passenger rolling stock subsystem of the rail system in the European Union
PPP	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
PPS	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
PPV/PPW	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
PR	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
Practice effect	SMS Safety Culture Human and Organisational Factor	ISO	ISO 10075-1:2017(en) Ergonomic principles related to mental workload — Part 1: General issues and concepts, terms and definitions	Latest release
Practices	Freight	Glossary	Transport of dangerous goods. Risks Management Framework. Framework glossary v. 1.0/2018
Pre-arranged path (PaP)	RNE Glossary	Glossary	RNE Glossary - NS_CID_Glossary_2025

Common Safety Method
Conformity Assessment
Control-Command and Signalling
Data Protection
Energy
Entity in Charge of Maintenance
ERTMS
EU Policy
Freight
Infrastructure
International Relations
International Standard
Interoperability
Noise
Operation
Persons with Reduced Mobility
Railway Tunnels
Registers
Regulation
RNE Glossary
Safety / SSC-SA
Security
SERA_EU Transport
Single Market Mutual Recognition Conformity Assessment
SMS Safety Culture Human and Organisational Factor
Telematics Applications for Passenger and Freight Services
Vehicles / VA
Withdrawn

Agreement
Application Guide
Certification Scheme
CIT Document
Convention
COTIF Document
Council Recommendation
Decision
Directive
ERA Technical Document
EU Technical Document
Glossary
Guide
International Agreement
ISO
Manual
Recommendation
Regulation
Sectorial Scheme
Technical Document
TSI
Website