railML^® 3 will bring a structural break, as it has been developed from scratch. On the one hand this means, that it will not be downward compatible. Yet it also bears the huge advantage of starting new and therefore coming to an end with difficulties in railML 2.

In order to avoid interferences between the two fundamentally different railML versions, it has been decided to establish a new wiki for railML 3. While designing the new Wiki, the programmers continuously focus on making the usage easier, quicker and as automatized as possible. Amongst many smaller adjustments three major changes will stand out, which are detailed in the following:

• Various texts and templates for the railML3 Wiki can be reused from the old wiki. As both wikis will be existent in the future, it is important to ensure that content-related changes of these sections apply to both. Therefore, texts of the railML 3 Wiki will be transcluded back to the railML 2 Wiki, enabling a central maintenance and correct presentation of content.
• A big time saver will be a new function, which automatically feeds the railML 3 Wiki with data from the schema. In the past every element had to be set up manually in the wiki, in future the basis is established automatically: A wiki page for every element is generated and completed with further important data (e.g. parents, children, documentation tags and attributes).
• The automatically generated content of the different release railML3 versions will be stored distinctly. The user will therefore be able to navigate between the different versions, look for differences and find the exact specification of the railML version they use, even if it is not the newest one.

Mr. Mag. Ferri Leberl, railML documentation expert and overall responsible for the project, comments “We are happy to develop a new railML 3 Wiki solution, which enables the railML community to concentrate on broader topics like the intent of an element, examples and best practice, instead of the monotonous work of inserting information into the wiki.”. For the future an interwiki mapping function is planned, which shall link analogue railML^® 2 and railML^® 3 elements. Despite a lot of differences of the two schema versions, there are commonalities, which can be displayed illustratively by this.

The wiki is currently under development and will be published in near future. We are looking forward to receiving feedback and/or ideas for future enhancements!