On October 31^st railML.org released the public beta version of their completely new developed rail scheme. Like the previous schemes the XSD’s and examples are available for free at www.railML.org.

The railML v3.1 beta scheme is based on the RailTopoModel (Version 1.1), a infrastructure and assent management model, which has been developed by a number of large European Infrastructure Managers and railML.org under patronage of UIC since 2013. In 2016 this RailTopoModel has become an International Railways Standard (IRS 30100) like other long lasting norms in the railway domain.

The development of railML 3.1 took less than 18 months and was done in a community based agile development process in two use-case specific working groups. railML.org wants to thank the national railway infrastructure managers of Czechia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Switzerland as well as international organisations like UIC and EUAR and uncounted supporters for their technical background knowledge and help during this process.

Currently railML 3.1 supports the use cases Network statement (NSTM) and Schematic Track plan (SCTP) as well as the feeding of the EUAR’s network database RINF. With this version railML.org is building the basis for the data management regarding current railway key demands like Asset management and BIM, ETCS rollout masterplans and Automatic Train Operation.

The official presentation of railML 3.1 will take place in Brussels at the Norwegian Mission to the EU during the 32^nd railML.org conference on November 14^th. Following this event the railway community can use the evaluation period for internal tests and comments as well as early adopters implementations before the final official industry standard will be published in early 2018.

After this important step the railML.org community will not rest: The next steps comprise the integration of the currently developed first railML interlocking use case (Routes for Railway Simulation) as well as further infrastructure use cases (like Track Geometry for BIM and Asset Status Representation) which are requested by railML partners. In addition, the well established railML.org timetable working group is strengthening their refactoring activities with the focus on converting the well-proven railML 2.x schemes to railML 3.x in 2018.

The first corner stone of this migration strategy is a common time dimension model for railML 3 timetable and infrastructure that has been approved by both working groups.

Like in the last 15 years, the demands, knowledge and support of the large railML community from all over Europe, Australia and Japan is the basis for the ongoing railML development work. railML.org is pleased for the feedback of the community to the todays released railML 3.1 beta.