The paper presents the issues of railway traffic control devices testing and focuses on European Train Control System (ETCS) devices widely implemented in railways. The functions of the ETCS system, principles of operation are described. The basic telegrams transmitted in the track-to-train relation are listed. The process of designing and verifying the implemented data and what parameters are checked at the stage of field tests using the locomotive is briefly described. The functional model of the SRK devices, including ETCS elements, was presented, and the close relationship between the base layer of the railway traffic control devices and the ETCS was shown. Equipment testing reduces the availability of the rail network, engages staff, and generates costs. A test generation method is presented to minimize the impact. Two indicators are proposed for reducing the set of checks, the cost of checking and the information effectiveness. The cost of checking due to the problematic estimate is generalized, divided into three groups taking into account the difficulty and resource consumption of bringing the devices to the initial state and their operation according to the test. Therefore, the obtained set of checks is suboptimal and ensures complete coverage of the functions with tests, which is essential when testing devices. The tests are carried out using available setting commands and the implementation of tasks - entry and exit routes at the station. The proposed method is universal and can be applied to any railway traffic control device, regardless of the manufacturing technology. It is a non-invasive method in the structure of the tested devices and does not require additional hardware resources.