Railway similar to the other branches of global economy commonly uses information technologies in its business. This includes, inter alia, issues such as railway traffic management, rolling stock management, stacking timetables, information for passengers, booking and selling tickets. Variety aspects of international railway operations as well as a large number of companies operating in the global railway market causes that currently we use a lot of independent systems that often should work together. The lack of international standards for data structures and protocols causes the need to design and maintain multiple interfaces. This approach is inefficient, time consuming and expensive. Therefore, the initiative to develop an open, international standard for the exchange of data for railway application was established. This standard was named railML. In this paper, we will also focus on a new topological model suitable to be used with members of the UIC (International Union of Railways) RailTopoModel. This International Railway Standard (IRS) define data model and a corresponding data exchange format. Unified and standardised data structures, which are application-independent and producer-independent, should simplify data exchange between railway systems and reduce number of interfaces which are required for systems cooperation. It is useful and cost-effective technological solution. The current state of railML and RailTopoModel specification and the trend of development will be discussed.