Railroad Wayside Telemetry Standard™

The open IoT standard that unifies railroad wayside telemetry across every vendor. Apache 2.0 licensed — free to use, forever.

v1.0 complete and in final QC. Specification, GitHub repository, and Python reference library release together — join the waitlist.

What is RWTS™?

RWTS is the open IoT standard for railroad wayside equipment — an application-layer message format that unifies grade crossings, signals, switches, detectors, and power systems under one common language, regardless of vendor.

Historically, wayside monitoring meant vendor lock-in: each manufacturer's equipment speaks its own protocol, so multi-vendor deployments require custom translation at every seam. RWTS closes that gap with a single open contract any vendor can implement.

Key Features

  • 10 message types covering registration, heartbeat, telemetry, alarm lifecycle (raise / clear / acknowledge), configuration, and server commands
  • Transport agnostic — runs over MQTT or SNMPv3
  • Self-describing devices — plug-and-play with zero pre-configuration
  • Geographic addressing — milepost-based (MARK-SUB-MP-HOUSE-UNIT)
  • Efficient encoding — CBOR (binary) or JSON (human-readable)
  • 253+ standard alarm codes — consistent semantics across equipment

Technical Specification

Devices are identified by a milepost-based address — reporting mark, subdivision, milepost, house, unit — so every message ties to a physical location on the railroad. Messages travel over MQTT or SNMPv3, both secured with TLS 1.2+ / authPriv, and carry UTC timestamps with sequence numbers for integrity.

Full RWTS & AREMA Part 24.2.1 alignment walkthrough →

Adopting RWTS

For Railroads

Deploy the Wayside Maintenance Monitoring System — the reference implementation built by the team that designed RWTS.

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For Equipment Vendors

Implement RWTS in your devices to offer interoperability to railroad customers.

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For Developers

Build RWTS-compatible software using our Python library and specification.

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FAQ

Is RWTS really free?

Yes — published under Apache 2.0. Use it, modify it, build products with it, no fees, forever.

What if EPU Engineering goes out of business?

Apache 2.0 means the specification remains freely available regardless. Any implementation built on RWTS v1.0 will continue to work. The standard is designed to outlive any single company.

Is RWTS production-ready?

RWTS v1.0 is complete and in final QC. EPU's Wayside Sentinel, Overwatch, and Nexus are the reference implementations. Join the waitlist to get the spec and reference library on public release.

Can I use the RWTS name for my product?

You may describe your product as "RWTS-compatible" or "supporting RWTS" if it genuinely implements the specification. The RWTS trademark is protected to prevent confusion — contact us with questions about trademark usage.

Be First to Get RWTS™

Join the Early Access Waitlist