RailML - a standard interface for railway data

This article describes a newly developed computer interface which can be used to simplify data transfer between railway simulation and operation computer programs. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) was developed for use in internet applications and describes both the data and the structure of a document. In 2001 a group of railway application developers in Europe formed a partnership to produce an open source XML-based language for railway applications, called RailML. Consortium partners are currently developing data structures for the data files used in railway simulation: timetable, infrastructure, and rolling stock. Benefits of using RailML to simplify data transfer between a growing number of rail simulation programmes are that it allows planners and operators easily to use different types of computer applications.