An Open Source initiative for Railways
The OpenRail Association creates an open,
autonomous and collaborative innovation space.
Its mission is to promote the development of Open Source
software projects in the railway sector, as it already
exists in numerous other industrial sectors like
telecommunication, automotive, or energy.
Let's solve problems together!
Over the years, many private or commercial initiatives have resulted in valuable, but mostly "in- house" applications or frameworks. These disconnected initiatives necessarily overlap, within a context of constrained IT development resources.
The objective of the OpenRail Association Initiative is to provide an open space to foster innovation and software development in the railway sector.
Software development activity is now an inherent part of
rail operations, and all players have IT teams working on
internal projects. Often using tools provided by private
software publishers, these teams continually create value.
They know the needs and constraints of the business. They
can innovate and propose reliable technical solutions. They
are already doing this, but in isolation.
OpenRail Association wishes to federate all the efforts
that are made by IT teams around the world in open,
collaborative, scalable and robust software projects.
IT projects by the railways and for the railways.
The rail industry collectively needs a set of affordable, well-understood, reliable, and maintained software tools to perform basic analyses of their customers' needs, business assets, or environmental impact of their operations.
"no matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else"
According to Joy's Law, attributed to Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy, the brightest people - at the heart of corporate innovation - often work for others.
To face this situation, the largest companies in the world are adopting so-called open innovation strategies. Open innovation allows both to foster internal innovation thanks to the contribution of resources outside the company (flow called outside - in); and to stimulate innovation within the broader ecosystem by allowing the development of ideas outside the company's borders (flow called inside - out).
Open Source is a form of open innovation designed for software development and complex systems.
From Microsoft to IBM, Tesla to Airbus, Open Source methods and solutions are no longer in question. Open Source consists in opening the source code of a software so that everyone can read it, use it, and suggest improvements. Everyone can adapt the software to their own requirements and needs, while sharing their innovations with a large community. Development issues are therefore shared. Bugs, their resolution and the efforts made to fix them are public, as well as the progress of new features.
07 Nov 2024: Railways and Open Transport track at FOSDEM 2025
23 Sep 2024: Three New Members Have Joined OpenRail Association
06 Sep 2024: First direct collaboration of OpenRail projects
These are the Open Source projects which are officially hosted by the OpenRail Association. They have been accepted through the incubation process. If you would like to suggest a new project to the OpenRail Association please have a look at the questionnaire for new projects.
OSRD is an open source web application for railway infrastructure design, capacity analysis, timetabling and simulation and short term path request.
GitHubStatus: development
RCM by SBB comprises a suite of products for rail condition monitoring. Based on the open-source data format RCM-DX (RCM Data eXchange), RCM enables easy accessibility and visualization of railway diagnostic data.
GitHubStatus: stable
Within the next years around 500 K freight wagons all over Europe owned and operated by various corporations will be converted from screw couplers to digital automatic couplers (DAC). To facilitate the migration process, a decision support system (DSS) is planned under the project.
Status: concept
Netzgrafik-Editor is now a mature tool for creating and analyzing regular-interval timetables. It's versatile for logistics planning in various domains. Features include interactive editing, graphic timetables, trainrun editing, and logistics analysis.
GitHubStatus: stable
The goal of the library is to have a flexible, high performance and easy to integrate linear referencing systems (LRS) library that can be used in any system to manipulate LRSs.
GitHubStatus: development
The organisations listed below have agreed on the principles and believe in the benefits of an Open Source foundation for the railway sector. They have founded and joined the OpenRail Association, and firmly believe that Open Source is a great opportunity for this industry.
UIC
Deutsche Bahn
SNCF
SBB CFF FFS
Infrabel
Entur
Flatland Association
We are looking forward to accept new members and make our community grow.
You can reach us by sending an email to
You are also welcome to join the OpenRail mailing list for general discussions and announcements. This is the best way to be informed about updates.