Our Activities

In a nutshell, Freight's work in the wagon domain enables railways to: reduce the number of bilateral agreements to be entered into avoid lengthy train handover processes operate and hand-over wa...

UIC, as the worldwide organisation for railways, is particularly committed to support the successful implementation of long distance freight services linking Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Accord...

Human and Organisational Factors Working Group (HOFWG) Chair: Nora Balfe, Irish Rail Vice-chair: Margot Van Vliet, Prorail UIC Coordinator: Virginie Papillault Meetings: 3 to 4 times a year. HOF Work...

The Security Platform Objectives The UIC Security Platform was set up by the UIC Executive Board on 7 June 2006 and restructured by the UIC Executive Board on 20 May 2008 as the single UIC structure e...

Take advantage of the best practices and: Increase commercial speed, Harmonise operations towards an efficient and timely transfer of goods, Facilitate the corridor development. Rail Even...

Take advantage of best practices, and: Avoid damage to your goods and wagons Implement best cargo loading practices Facilitate processes and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements (OPE TSI)...

Take advantage of best practices, and: Setup your combined transport operations according to common and national standards to facilitate time-effective carriage operation, thus eliminating unnecess...

Take advantage of best practices and: Ensure your operations are compliant with the RID regulation Be updated with the recent evolvement of dangerous goods carriage Streamline safe dangerous good...

Directives related to Security 16 December 2020 - Proposal for a new directive to enhance the resilience of critical entities providing essential services in the EU (CER Directive proposal) https://ec...

Take advantage of best practices, and: Increase customer satisfaction through better information quality Optimise dispatching and information provided to customers Reduce manual efforts in data acq...

Welcome to Fit for Freight - UIC Freight’s knowledge transfer webinars The Fit for Freight series commenced in November 2022, as part of the UIC’s Freight Month celebrations for its 100th anniversary....

UIC Metal Theft working group was an ad-hoc UIC security Platform WG, raised by request of its members to answer to the metal theft increasing rail services disruptions to passengers and freight servi...

Occupational Health & Safety Group (OHSG) Chair: TBN UIC Coordinator: Virginie Papillault Meetings: 3 to 4 times a year OHS Group objectives promoting effective management of occupational health...

BIRC Working group Border crossing – International Railway Corridors The BIRC working group was created in Warsaw in 18–19 February 2013 and closed in 2022. The aim of the WG was to study the issues r...

SAFETRAVELLERS - Secure and Frictionless Identity for EU and Third Country National Citizens SAFETRAVELLERS has received funding from European Union’s Horizon Europe Framework Programme under Grant Ag...

2025 - 20th UIC World Security Congress, Rabat, Morocco, on 2-4 December 2025 Wed, 11 Feb 2026 - 22:13 webmaster@uic.org...

Adapting to Climate Change: Building a Resilient Railway Future Climate change presents unprecedented challenges and opportunities for the global railway sector. As a sustainable mode of transport, ra...

UIC Africa region

Agreement on freight Train Transfer Inspection enables more agile cross-border operations by introducing ISO sampling for wagon inspections. The rules governing the transfer of wagons between particip...

The UIC report, “Carbon Footprint of Rail Infrastructure”, analyses the main existing reports and methodologies in the field and provides guidelines, recommendations and best practices for calculation...

Appendices Now Available on the UIC eShop To better serve you, we've made an important update: All appendices previously listed on this page are now available through the UIC Publications eShop. Why T...

Catalogue of products technically approved by UIC

Appendices Now Available on the UIC eShop To better serve you, we've made an important update: All appendices previously listed on this page are now available through the UIC Publications eShop. Why T...

It is necessary to match dynamic GPS positioning (e.g. of a wagon) with network objects (e.g. private sidings in order to alert the customer on imminent arrival). Assets developed by UIC, its members...

General context Comprising more than 80% of total railway passengers, commuter and regional rail serves as a backbone for local public transport in many countries around the world. It plays an importa...

Company code and UIC membership The company code is not strictly related to UIC membership. In order to obtain a company code, UIC members are invited to fill in the separate company allocation form....

UIC is an internationally-accredited Non-Governmental Organisation in consultative relations with the United Nations since 1950 and was elevated to a special status in 2015, cooperating more actively...

Corrective Maintenance / Restoring fitness to run – Working group

Wagon keepers are responsible for the safe state of their vehicles, and thus they need to be aware of what happens in a rail workshop when a wagon suffers from "en route" damage far away from their pr...

Leaflet 920-14 The 2 digit country code is based on the old 2 digit railway code. The code is defined in the UIC/OSJD Leaflet 920-14 – Version 2 (March 2005). This leaflet exists in 3 languages availa...

Latest Edition

Definition: A country's DIUM (Uniform Distance Table for International Freight Traffic) comprises various data concerning international rail freight transport used by Railway Undertakings (RU) and cus...

DIUM/NHM – Working Group

Members of the NHM/DIUM group work in close collaboration with OSJD due to the interdependence of their coding between the two main Economic Areas of Europe and Asia. Without the work of the group, da...

The role of UIC’s Documentation Centre is to collect, catalogue, distribute and store documentation related to international rail transport and associated fields (transport policy, environment, energ...

UIC Raildoc Portal As part of the Quality programme initiated in 2015, the new RailDoc web portal launched in June 2016 improves access to the information held by the UIC Documentation Centre. UIC R...

Efficient Cross Corridor Organisation

ECCO consists of the 11 Speakers of Railway Advisory Groups of 11 EU Rail Freight Corridors. The Speaker post is filled by a freight RU operating on the corridor and the scope of the group is the foll...

External costs More Contact Snejana MARKOVIC-CHENAIS, Senior advisor - Economic markovic@uic.org

Calculate your emissions!

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 - 22:57 webmaster@uic.org Image Visit EcoPassenger website: https:...

Fed with the most accurate available data for all transport modes, EcoTransIT World was developed in cooperation with ifeu (the German Institute for Environment and Energy) and technical providers o...

The global railway sector continuously works on increasing energy efficiency and reducing its CO2 emissions. For example, 28 European UIC members have collectively committed to reducing CO2 emissions...

European Radio Implementation Group

Visit ERRAC website: https://errac.org Wed, 11 Feb 2026 - 22:13 webmaster@uic.org Image...

a pan-European operating Train to Speed-up the Homologation of a low noise Brake System with LL Brake Blocks

DEDICATED WEBSITE http://europetrain.uic.org The project EuropeTrain Based on the main conclusions of the synthesis report [1] UIC started the EuropeTrain project which aimed to investigate the us...

Exceptional Consignments - Working Group

Join us and save precious time in finding the best routes and applying for the various country specific permits. Every rule has an exception, and we must deal with exceptions individually. Rail is t...

Annual update of External Costs of Rail and Road in EU 27: From the European Commission study on External costs to the annually updated external costs until 2022 In 2019, the EC developed the ‘Handbo...

For further information, please visit: External Costs

EFU

External funds and uic technical expertise UIC’s worldwide reputation for its rail technical expertise ensures its success in a competitive bidding process, giving access to various external sources o...

The vocation of the Finance Platform has been to address cross-sector, financial matters on behalf of European active members, in particular: repayment of revenue received from customers by the sales...

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 - 22:13 webmaster@uic.org Image Organisation The Group for Intern...

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 - 22:57 webmaster@uic.org Image Appendices Now Available on the UI...

OrganisationFreight forumWorking groups and projectsRail Freight Forward (RFF)We make sure that everything is easy to find and use. Saving you time and money. Rail Event - UIC Logistics Explained Anim...

General Contract of Use for Wagons

COTIF-CUV obliges wagon keepers and railway undertakings to define rules of utilisation, and GCU is the universal solution YOU need to be compliant with without the need to partake in individual bilat...

Global Level Crossing Network (GLCN) Wed, 11 Feb 2026 - 22:13 webmaster@uic.org Image...

Appel de Rabat du 29 avril 2021 'Green Deal ferroviaire africain pour une mobilité soutenable' Dans le droit fil de l'engagement climatique ferroviaire affiché par l’UIC en 2019 et à travers l’actuel...

Global System for Mobile communications - Railways

GSM-R Operators & Functional Group (OFG) The GSM-R OFG ensures monitoring of GSM-R usage (implementation reports), maintenance and development of GSM-R specifications (EIRENE and MORANE), which ar...

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 - 02:01 webmaster@uic.org Image Documents S...

Alliance of universities for the development of high-speed railways

The UIC Alliance of Universities was established in 2015 under the aegis of UIC for the development of High-Speed Rail (HSR). The Alliance is a global academic network including universities, institut...

High-speed Data UIC generate databases unique in the world that provides an overview of the high-speed reality regarding: lines, rolling stock, traffic and maps. Autodesk AutoCAD lt 2017 (https://abco...

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 - 02:01 webmaster@uic.org Image Sun, 15...

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 - 22:57 webmaster@uic.org Image Thu, 12 Feb...

High-Speed rail A comprehensive system allowing door-to-door transportation Growing environmental awareness due to the pandemic has resulted in a shift in customer mobility habits and has revived dema...

Leaflet 920-8 The allocation is described in UIC leaflet 920-8 available at https://shop.uic.org. UIC members can download the leaflet using their company specific user ID and password. Non-members ca...

International Railway Safety Network (IRSN) Chair: Guillaume Foeillet, SNCF UIC Coordinator: Isabelle Fonverne Meetings: 3 to 4 times a year. The International Railway Safety Network is a subgroup of...

International Railway Solutions

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 - 02:01 webmaster@uic.org Image So that, in short, explains the...

The UIC IT / eBusiness cooperates with international standard bodies in order to promote interoperability and comptatibility between different world regions and transport modes. CEN CEN is the Europea...

The following areas are being regularly analysed for prototype-to-production development: Customer Management (information necessary for Customer APIs and digital services) Asset Management Operati...

Verladerichtlinien / Règles de Chargement

Loading GuidelinesVerladerichtlinien / Règles de Chargement (updated April 1, 2025)The UIC Loading Guidelines currently consists of 2 substantial volumes, referencing all safe loading and securing of...

European Railway Location Database

The Central Reference File Database (CRD) (formerly known as Central Repository Domain) is a centralised database that stores Location Codes and Company Codes required by European regulation, and make...

MERITS Gold Get the most up-to-date integrated timetable and station data EDIFACT format...

The Network of Quick Responders is frequently used by the members of the UIC Security platform to receive a general overview about an arising security topic from other members within a short time. Th...

(*From French "Nomenclature harmonisée des marchandises") Harmonised Commodity Code Harmonisiertes Güterverzeichnis / Nomenclature harmonisée des marchandises The Harmonised Commodity Code (NHM) is ba...

UIC Noise and Vibration Sector Rail is the most sustainable mode of transport, consuming less energy, requiring less space, and emitting significantly less CO₂ than other transport modes. However, noi...

In the green transport package, published in 2008, the European Commission has published a communication "Rail noise abatement measures addressing the existing fleet". An impact assessment study has i...

Operations - Working Group

Keep an eye on the implementation of novel technologies impacting operational activities, as well as procedures, standards and best practices. Being part of this work group gives you an opportunity to...

Passenger railway accounts for 50% of rail activity, 8% of global passenger transport and less than 2% of greenhouse gas emissions from passenger transport, and is believed to be the backbone of futu...

DRTF (Database for Rail Tarif and Fairs) In 2020, UIC completed the procurement process for the implementation of the PRIFIS replacement tool and the design of the new related specification called DRT...

Whether for short or long distances, for regional, mass transit or high-speed travel, the transport of passengers by rail has a bright outlook. Among all the factors needed for the development of rail...

Chair: Vittorio Carta, DB AG Vice-chair: Alexander Gellner, SBB CFF FFS Vice-chair: Christoph Hinterleitner, ÖBB Secretary: Cristina Pini, Trenitalia S.p.A. Passenger Services Group The Passenger Serv...

Quality - Working Group

Save the time spent researching the news and directly discuss and shape the latest developments in the QMS world. This working group of experts on Quality Management Systems, although, not involved in...

The coalition’s ambition is to increase the modal share of rail freight in Europe from 18% currently to 30% by 2030 as a more effective macroeconomic factor in European growth. As the PMO for the RFF,...

Easily find, access and share solutions and information on railway security issues on a secure, user-friendly, comprehensive and interactive platform brought by UIC Security Division. The security hub...

Former Eco-Scoring

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 - 02:01 webmaster@uic.org Image Rail Sustainability Index proje...

Organisation The Railway System Forum (RSF) is a global working body in charge of all issues relating to the railway system, i.e. operations, control-command systems and telecoms, asset management, ra...

Visit TopRail website: https://toprail.org/ Wed, 11 Feb 2026 - 22:13 webmaster@uic.org Image...

RailData – Special Group

RAILDATA ORFEUS Ensures the electronic exchange of railway CIM/SMGS consignment notes and CUV wagon notes data between the co-operating railway undertakings, using a Central Data Management System (C...

RSM

RailSystemModel Due to an extension of its scope, RailTopoModel is now known as RailSystemModel. The official reference page for RailTopoModel / RailSystemModel can be found at https://rsm.uic.org. Th...

Commitments of UIC Members

Railway climate declaration At the UN Climate Summit in September 2014, UIC presented the Low Carbon Rail Transport Challenge – Technical Report. This provided a vision for the development of the rail...

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 - 22:57 webmaster@uic.org Image Appendices Now Available on the UI...

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 - 22:57 webmaster@uic.org Image Appendices Now Available on the UI...

Together with standardisation and promotion of railways, research is part of the core business of UIC and, indeed, was the reason for the creation of the organisation in 1922. UIC is committed to sup...

Together with standardisation and promotion of railways, research is part of the core business of UIC and, indeed, was the reason for the creation of the organisation in 1922. UIC is committed to sup...

Rolling Stock Standardisation Standardisation is one of the most important aspects in developing an efficient, competitive and safe rail system. The UIC has considerable experience in this area throug...

UIC sabotage, intrusion and attack working group (WG SIA) Chaired by Deutsche Bahn AG (Germany) This WG was created in November 2017 to address the topics sabotage, intrusion and attack regarding to t...

Safety is at the core of railway activity and forms part of the UIC Fundamental Values department within UIC. It is also a transverse subject. It plays a crucial role in the work of UIC activities: Pa...

Safety Performance Group Safety Performance Group Chair: Luca Maria Granieri, Trenitalia Vice Chair: Mauro Mendetta, Trenitalia UIC Coordinator: Iryna Polzikova Objectives: Provide safety insights th...

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 - 22:13 webmaster@uic.org Image Highlights 20th World Security C...

Service brands are used: In time table information (MERITS) To associate a service brand with a service mode or a train generic service mode (Train, High speed train, Interregional, Regional, (Sub) ur...

Standardisation: the UIC role UIC has been an SSO (standards setting organisation) since its creation in 1922, and technical harmonisation of the railway system remains one of its core objectives. Its...

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 - 02:01 webmaster@uic.org Image https://uic.org/timelines/ Standar...

Standardisation, UIC’s core mission from the beginning... And now with the IRS, a resolutely forward-looking instrument to continue international cooperation among railways and partners. Since the cre...

RAILISA Wed, 11 Feb 2026 - 22:13 webmaster@uic.org Image RAILISA (RAIL Informa...

Sustainable development is considered one of the main global challenges facing the world today and is an important aspect of transport development. UIC and its members work continuously to demonstrate...

UIC Sustainable land use sector Biodiversity, ecosystems, and habitats are fundamental to human existence, providing essential services such as clean air, water, and climate regulation. As a major lan...

Reporting

UIC Leaflet 330 Rail offers sustainable transport solutions and UIC Leaflet 330 “Railway specific environmental performance indicators” enables the sector – as well as single railway companies – to de...

African railway green deal for sustainable mobility

Rabat call for action, 29 April 2021 'African railway green deal for sustainable mobility' As a continuation of the railway climate commitment declared by UIC in 2019 and by means of this 'African rai...

Technical Inspection of Wagons - Working Group

The uniform technical inspection criteria and procedures applicable to railway undertakings exchanging freight wagons are set out in Annex 9 of the GCU (General Contract of Use for Wagons). The work g...

COP21 Paris 2015

What is “Train to Paris”? “Train to Paris” is a synchronised network of trains planned to arrive in Paris from across Asia and Europe, with some trains originating from Mongolia, Russia & China...

8-12 April 2019 18-22 November 2019

Appendices Now Available on the UIC eShop To better serve you, we've made an important update: All appendices previously listed on this page are now available through the UIC Publications eShop. Why T...

The purpose of the accidents at work database Measurement of occupational safety performance can be achieved through the creation and management of a database of accidents at work. The UIC Occupationa...

International Conference on Railway Stations

Visit UIC nextstation website: https://nextstation.org General context Railway stations are usually considered from three perspectives: customer access to trains, business opportunities due to a high...

The control of risk is something of vital importance to the rail sector.

Mission The control of risk is something of vital importance to the rail sector. Third party risk (brought about by issues not within the control of the rail sector) is one of the biggest contributors...

The Group of Information Management professionals (former Documentation Group) wants to address all professionals who are involved in any kind of information management work within UIC member companie...

The International Energy Agency (IEA) and UIC are working together to create synergies by gathering information for databases focusing on the railway sector in order to support the IEA's development f...

The UIMC, the International Union of Railway Medical Services, is an autonomous special group under the aegis of the UIC, the International union of railways with headquarters in Paris....

Claim Settlement - Working Group

The General Contract of Use of Wagons (GCU) does not only lay down technical and safety aspects of wagon utilisation but also the liability issues. In the mass business of freight transport, damage to...

Wagon Utilisation - Working Group

UIC provides and enhances technical and operational railway expertise needed for more economic wagon use. Manage the ongoing improvements of the GCU (General Contract of Use for Wagons), increase oper...

The world’s biggest gathering of railway researchers General context The World Congress on Railway Research (WCRR) is the world’s largest international congress on railway research. The event was init...

The project is therefore divided into a “Sections” and “Language” part. Xborder Sections Let’s look into the workings of XBorder Sections, which: further improves the Cross Border Section Handbook, t...