ERA Railway Terminology Collection

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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Latest update: 1 May 2025

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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
CAST	EU Policy	Glossary	Glossary for transport statistics - 5TH EDITION 2019
Casuality	EU Policy	Glossary	Glossary for transport statistics - 5TH EDITION 2019
Catastrophic accident	Common Safety Method	Regulation	Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 402/2013 of 30 April 2013 on the common safety method for risk evaluation and assessment and repealing Regulation (EC) No 352/2009
Catastrophic rupture	Freight	Glossary	Handbook of scenarios for assessing major chemical accident risks JRC106029 - Ed. 2017
Categories of goods carried by rail	EU Policy	Glossary	Glossary for transport statistics - 5TH EDITION 2019
Category of line	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
Category of person in railway accident statistics	EU Policy	Glossary	Glossary for transport statistics - 5TH EDITION 2019
Category of vehicle	Entity in Charge of Maintenance	Certification Scheme	Certification scheme for ECM and outsourced maintenance functions under Regulation (EU) 2019/779
Category of vehicles	Entity in Charge of Maintenance	Sectorial Scheme	Sectorial Scheme for accreditation and recognition of ECM certification bodies under Regulation (EU) 2019/779. ERA 1172/002 V3.1 on 15/06/2020
Catenary	RNE Glossary	Glossary	RNE Glossary - NS_CID_Glossary_2023
Causal Factor	Safety / SSC-SA	Regulation	Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/572 of 24 April 2020 on the reporting structure to be followed for railway accident and incident investigation reports
Causes	Safety / SSC-SA	Directive	Directive (EU) 2016/798 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2016 on railway safety (recast)
Causes	Freight	Glossary	Transport of dangerous goods. Risks Management Framework. Framework glossary v. 1.0/2018
CBSS	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
CBTC	ERTMS	Glossary	ERTMS/ATO Glossary - version 2 on 05.07.2023
cc	EU Policy	Glossary	Glossary for transport statistics - 5TH EDITION 2019
CC	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
CC	Telematics Applications for Passenger	Application Guide	TAP TSI Annex B.52 Reservation application_guide - version 1.0 of 06/12/2013
CCAMLR	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
CCC	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

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