49th railML® Conference: Current Developments in railML 3.4, RailDax and railVIVID

by Philipp Schüdde (railML.org)

The 49th railML conference was held on June 18th, 2026 and inspired attendees with its avid exchange of project insights and best practice examples from railML partners as well as the latest updates on railML 3.4 development, RailDax and railVIVID. The conference was held virtually, connecting 75 international partners.

We would like to express our sincere thanks to all participating partners and community members.

 

Updates on railML 3.4 and railVIVID 2.x

railML.org e.V.’s Governance Coordinator Vasco Paul Kolmorgen announced the highly anticipated launch of the railML 3.4 Beta 4 version, which is now available for download and awaits feedback through the community review processes. railML 3.4 Beta 4 contains several use cases from the mFUND project IDX4rail, which connects tramway and railway data, and two use cases from the ISO RailDax partner project with Jernbanedirektoratet. Mr. Kolmorgen also outlined corresponding emerging use cases, the current railML 3.4 development timeline, emphasizing the upcoming Beta 5 in August. All emerging use cases for railML 3.4 are listed in the railML Wiki. In a second lecture, Mr. Kolmorgen provided the community with relevant governance and organisational news from railML.org, including new partners, updates to the Wiki and the current state of IDX4rail.

railML schema coordinators Milan Hoffmann (Timetable), Christian Rahmig (Infrastructure), Dr. Jörg von Lingen (Interlocking and Rolling Stock), and Thomas Nygreen (Commons) reported on developments in their respective domains. The key points of these presentations can be summarized as follows:

  • Updates on Timetable corresponding to RailDax use cases SCOT and LTST, more details for Temporal Distributions, added Pattern Trains for spatial context, and further improvements in railML 3.4.

  • Updates on Interlocking including Inhibitions, Catenary, Restricted Areas, Signal Plan, and ECTS.

  • Updates on Infrastructure including Positioning, Superelevation (Track Geometry), functional extensions, Survey Data, and Maintenance Data.

  • Updates on Rollingstock corresponding to Formation, Vehicle, Vehicle Parts, and Passenger Facilities.

  • Updates on ontology corresponding to the introduction of the tool railXMI2RDF and quality assurance.

Furthermore, developer Margo Vyskarka presented exciting new feature of the latest railVIVID version, a validation software for railML files: newly added tree view and table view visualizations, improvements to validation experience, platform-independent portable command line version, and further planned improvements for railVIVID version 2.2.

 

Lectures from Partners - Best Practice and Project Reports

A special highlight of the conference was the status report of the ISO RailDax Revision (ISO/TS 4398:2022) project presented by Torben Brand from Jernbanedirektoratet (NO). Falk Nieder from GS1 Germany (DE) showcased how synergies between railML® and GS1 lead to improved interoperability based on use-case-driven collaboration. Heidrun Jost from Hitachi Rail GTS (DE) introduced the best practice example Aramis-TMS, a train management system employed in Norway. Iga Samkowska from Warsaw University of Technology (PL) presented the software CPS (Digital Schematic Track Plan) that enables configuration management of track topology and railway infrastructure, including features like creating and editing schematic plans.

 

Download of Presentations and Conference Materials

Once logged in with your personal railML-Account, you can download all conference presentations and additional material here: 49th railML conference. Community contributions are welcome. Please direct your feedback or comments to orga@governance.railml.org.

 

Save the date!

The next railML conferences are set for November 5th, 2026, at SBB in Zurich (hybrid) and end of May/June 2027 (virtual). The former will feature the release of railML version 3.4.

To not miss out on any announcement regarding these events, check the railML newsfeed and follow us on LinkedIn.