[1] The exchange of data for operation concepts, slot management, simulation or infrastructure planning, etc.

was possible either by hand or with a lot of special developed interfaces with loss of time and cost problems for railway companies.

railML tries to place at disposal a free and self-describing format close to existing standards.

[3] The development of railML was initiated in early 2002 by the Fraunhofer-IVI (Dresden, Germany) and the ETH Zürich – IVT (Zurich, Switzerland) against the background of the chronic difficulty of connecting different railway IT applications.

railML's version 3, incorporating a new topology model based on the RailTopoModel, underwent development starting in mid-2015.

railML (railway mark-up language) is a common exchange format, which employs XML for the description of rail-specific data.

The organization behind railML claims that the restrictions preventing redistribution and modifications are for quality control purposes, the means of which is requiring application developers to purchase a certification.

With this railML.org adapts the enhancements made by CC and garanties schema user the same usage rights as in previous years and railML versions.

a registered non-profit association by German law (registration number VR 5750 at the local court in Dresden/Germany) since April 23, 2012. railML is based on XML and sub-areas use other existing XML-schemes such as MathML and GML.

Applications using railML version 2.x include a lot of timetable related programmes like OpenTrack (interactive railway simulator[20]), FBS (planning software for railway operation[21]), Viriato (scheduling system[22]) and OpenTimeTable (real time analysis of network operation data[23]).

Applications using railML version 3.x include additionally BIM related infrastructure planning software like VIS All 3D[24] or railway survey systems like GPSinfradat.

There are binary versions for Microsoft Windows and Java, also the source code was published in Autumn 2015 under the EUPL licence.

The participation on the development and semi-annual conferences to exchange experience and discuss basics is open.