Worldwide Transportation Library Releases FSL-2026 Railway Lexicon with DOI
Sample definition for Standard Gauge
The 613-term Ferritological Standard Lexicon is citable through a DOI and covers track, power supply, stations, signalling and rolling stock
FSL-2026 provides common railroad nomenclature for academic researchers, government institutions & private sector entities wanting to align their work with a vocabulary that's consistent worldwide.”
ALBUQUERQUE, NM, UNITED STATES, November 3, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The Worldwide Transportation Library (WWTL) has published the Ferritological Standard Lexicon, FSL-2026, a controlled reference vocabulary for railway infrastructure. Version 1.2.0 contains 613 defined terms and is openly available on Mendeley Data under DOI 10.17632/h4b8tmvhp9.1. The lexicon gives engineers, researchers, archivists and data teams a shared, citable set of definitions for describing rail assets and networks.— Carlos Rogers
FSL-2026 covers five areas of railway practice: track, power supply, stations, signalling and rolling stock. Each entry records a part of speech, a domain and a definition, with synonyms, related terms and usage notes where they apply.
The lexicon also underpins Ferritype, WWTL's classification scheme for rail segments, which describes a line by gauge, power, track count and segregation. Using FSL terms in those classifications keeps descriptions consistent from one network or country to the next.
Rail terminology varies widely between regions, operators and eras, which makes records hard to compare and combine. FSL-2026 addresses this with one defined term per concept, versioned and citable, so datasets, reports and asset inventories can point to the same definition. It is a companion to WWTL's Viatological Standard Lexicon (VSL-2026) for roads and its Maritime Standard Lexicon (MSL-2026) for ports and shipping.
“Railway research is certainly nothing new, but the terminology used from one jurisdiction to the next can vary widely”, said Carlos Rogers, founder and CEO of the Worldwide Transportation Library. “The FSL-2026 provides common railroad nomenclature for academic researchers, government institutions and private sector entities wanting to align their work with a vocabulary that's consistent worldwide.”
FSL-2026 version 1.2.0 was published on 22 October 2026 and is free to use for non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 licence (CC BY-NC 4.0). The dataset can be downloaded from Mendeley Data at doi.org/10.17632/h4b8tmvhp9.1, and the lexicon can be browsed online at wwtl.info/rail/fsl.html. Organizations that need commercial use or programmatic access can query it through the WWTL API.
About the Worldwide Transportation Library
The Worldwide Transportation Library (WWTL) is an archive of road, rail and maritime infrastructure, documented through photographs, route pages, technical diagrams and standardized lexicons. Founded by viatologist and transportation photographer Carlos Rogers, WWTL publishes its reference vocabularies as versioned, citable datasets. More at wwtl.info.
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