Welcome

The sharing of infrastructure data, both internally across an organisation and externally between organisations, is a daily-basis task in the railway sector. A number of specialized formats have been created for both rail and non-rail focused purposes. The design of each format primarily attempted to address only the specific requirements inherently relating to that given discipline. Since the railway network and its elements are similar in every country, there was no need to reinvent the wheel.

Business objectives

Investing in a standardised railway data format has provided multiple benefits for the sector, including improved data quality, more efficient business performance, streamlined and re-usable development, integrated IT systems, and return on investments.

RailTopoModel

The RailTopoModel is a logical object model to standardise the representation of railway infrastructure-related data. Together with railML®, which defines the schema for the exchange of data, it has revolutionized the sharing of information in the railway industry.

IRS 30100

Standards in the railway sector have been compiled for more than 100 years in so called UIC leaflets. Today UIC, the largest railway organisation worldwide, calls these regulations International Railway Standards (IRS).
The RailTopoModel 1.0 became such an IRS in spring 2016 and has been IRS 30100 since then.

  • Download RailTopoModel
  • RailTopoModel ↔ railML
  • RailTopoModel licence
  • RailTopoModel and derivatives

Download railTopoModel

RailTopoModel Logo

The different versions of RailTopoModel as well as the final version of the IRS 30100 are available now for the railway sector. You may download it below for free.

For better comprehension, you may inspect the RailTopoModel's wiki too.

RailTopoModel and railML: What's the difference?

railML

RailTopoModel is a generic railway data model that has been designed to support current and future business usages and needs. For example, railway infrastructure managers may set up their asset data base following the basic structure of the RailTopoModel. On the other hand, railML is a common XML-based railway data exchange format. It can be seen as a direct use case of RailTopoModel as it implements the concepts of RTM for data exchange purposes. Together, RailTopoModel and railML 3.x  form the standardized data exchange format proposal.

RTM licence terms

RailTopoModel must be used according to the restricted Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Unported License.

Following further requirements must be fulfilled:

  1. RailTopoModel must only be distributed through https://www.railtopomodel.org. Any further distribution is prohibited.
  2. RailTopoModel must be mentioned in any software component, handbook or leaflet where the software is described with its characteristics.
  3. Furthermore, please mind the conditions of the CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0-License. Please take notice of the licences in a summarised version and the full and binding legal code before using RailTopoModel.

RailTopoModel and derivatives

RailTopoModel describes the topology of the railway network in a general way. It is the basis for development of railML 3.x infrastructure scheme. RailTopoModel can also be the base for your infrastructure database. As this database is usually something internal, there is no need for a certification. For certain purposes it may be necessary to extend RailTopoModel and derive modified or enhanced models. You are free to use and extend the model in such a way without further notice to us. However, we will be glad to hear about your approaches and cooperate with you for implementation.

One example for such a RailTopoModel model fork is the RailSystemModel, which has been developed within the EU-funded LinX4Rail project.