SMART data for very distant stations

[Mike Playle]

My software just became very puzzled.

The root cause turned out to be this record in the SMART data:

{"FROMBERTH":"0498",
 "TD":"CA",
 "STANOX":"50331",
 "ROUTE":"2",
 "STEPTYPE":"B",
 "TOBERTH":"0494",
 "TOLINE":"",
 "BERTHOFFSET":"-46",
 "PLATFORM":"",
 "EVENT":"B",
 "COMMENT":"24/06/2011",
 "STANME":"BRNTWOOD",
 "FROMLINE":""},
 
The berths being described, CA0498 and CA0494, are just south of Ely,
but this record associates them with STANOX 50331 which is Brentwood,
between London and Chelmsford! In fact I can see 8 records all trying
to tell me that Brentwood is in the CA area.

Am I misinterpreting the data?

Has anyone seen records like these before?

Mike

[Peter Hicks]

Hi Mike

That looks like an error upstream - I see set of steps on the 'SE' TD for Brentwood, but also a bunch on the 'CA' TD.

Have you spotted anything else?  I'll feed it back to NR and see if we can get it fixed - although you may be using the data for more than it was intended, since this is primarily for TRUST to report movements at locations.

Peter

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[Mike Playle]

On Monday, April 11, 2016 at 3:11:18 PM UTC+1, Peter Hicks wrote:

Have you spotted anything else?  I'll feed it back to NR and see if we can get it fixed - although you may be using the data for more than it was intended, since this is primarily for TRUST to report movements at locations.

 
I can't see any other similar problems.

I'm using it to derive approximate geographical locations for TD berths - definitely not what it was intended for, and I can manage without this data anyway.

I'm glad to know it's not just me - thanks!

[Mike Playle]

On Monday, April 11, 2016 at 3:47:04 PM UTC+1, Mike Playle wrote:

I can't see any other similar problems. 

 
I spoke too soon. There is more bad data: the CA area also has steps
for STANOXes 63641 (Upper Holloway), 72252 (Acton Central), 87136 (Kew
Gardens) and 87138 (Gunnersby), none of which seems sensible to me.

[Peter Hicks]

Upper Holloway is fine, the signalbox there reports through Cambridge rather than directly, as the box only has a handful of signals.

Acton, Kew Gardens and Gunnersbury should be through AW - Acton Wells.  Are there entries for AW for them too?

[Mike Playle]

On Monday, April 11, 2016 at 6:44:44 PM UTC+1, Peter Hicks wrote:

Upper Holloway is fine, the signalbox there reports through Cambridge rather than directly, as the box only has a handful of signals.

 

Acton, Kew Gardens and Gunnersbury should be through AW - Acton Wells.  Are there entries for AW for them too?

 Yes, there are, and interestingly the CA and AW records seem to mirror
each other, with the difference being that the first digit of the
berth number is replaced by a letter. Do they also relate to Upper
Holloway somehow?

{"FROMBERTH":"0104","TD":"AW","STANOX":"72252","ROUTE":"","STEPTYPE":"B","TOBERTH":"0102","TOLINE":"","BERTHOFFSET":"53","PLATFORM":"","EVENT":"A","COMMENT":"13/06/2012","STANME":"ACTNCEN","FROMLINE":""},

{"FROMBERTH":"0102","TD":"AW","STANOX":"72252","ROUTE":"2","STEPTYPE":"B","TOBERTH":"0148","TOLINE":"","BERTHOFFSET":"-11","PLATFORM":"","EVENT":"B","COMMENT":"13/06/2012","STANME":"ACTNCEN","FROMLINE":""},

{"FROMBERTH":"0101","TD":"AW","STANOX":"72252","ROUTE":"","STEPTYPE":"B","TOBERTH":"0103","TOLINE":"","BERTHOFFSET":"51","PLATFORM":"","EVENT":"C","COMMENT":"13/06/2012","STANME":"ACTNCEN","FROMLINE":""},

[...]

{"FROMBERTH":"B104","TD":"CA","STANOX":"72252","ROUTE":"","STEPTYPE":"B","TOBERTH":"B102","TOLINE":"","BERTHOFFSET":"53","PLATFORM":"","EVENT":"A","COMMENT":"08/07/2011","STANME":"ACTNCEN","FROMLINE":""},

{"FROMBERTH":"B102","TD":"CA","STANOX":"72252","ROUTE":"2","STEPTYPE":"B","TOBERTH":"A148","TOLINE":"","BERTHOFFSET":"-11","PLATFORM":"","EVENT":"B","COMMENT":"08/07/2011","STANME":"ACTNCEN","FROMLINE":""},

{"FROMBERTH":"B101","TD":"CA","STANOX":"72252","ROUTE":"","STEPTYPE":"B","TOBERTH":"B103","TOLINE":"","BERTHOFFSET":"51","PLATFORM":"","EVENT":"C","COMMENT":"08/07/2011","STANME":"ACTNCEN","FROMLINE":""},

Mike

[Juhani Pirttilahti]

It seems typical that berths, which belong to an outside area, are prefixed with a character. The area CA has several of them:

Upper Holloway berths have been prefixed with 'U' and I see berths U061, U062, U063, U064, U065 and U066.

Then there is a line through Acton Canal Wharf to Dudding Hill. Berths on that line are as follows:

-Acton Canal Wharf, prefix 'CW': CW21, CW28, CW29, CW34

-Neasden Jn, prefix 'N': N002, N004, N005, N006, N018, N019, ME33

-Dudding Hill Jn, prefix 'DH': DH02, DH06, DH12, DH13, DH15, WHBA, WHCA

When I look through my database, I don't see any activity on berths B101, B102 or B104 in the CA area. They may be inactive or purely historical by now. This leads me to a conclusion that berths that became historical at some point have not been completely removed from the SMART data.

Also, from my records, I can say the SMART reference data has not been updated for months (I don't see any changed data since mid january 2016).

-Juhani

[Peter Hicks]

On 12 Apr 2016, at 10:38, Juhani Pirttilahti <juhani.pi...@gmail.com> wrote:

It seems typical that berths, which belong to an outside area, are prefixed with a character. The area CA has several of them:

Upper Holloway berths have been prefixed with 'U' and I see berths U061, U062, U063, U064, U065 and U066.

Then there is a line through Acton Canal Wharf to Dudding Hill. Berths on that line are as follows:

-Acton Canal Wharf, prefix 'CW': CW21, CW28, CW29, CW34

-Neasden Jn, prefix 'N': N002, N004, N005, N006, N018, N019, ME33

-Dudding Hill Jn, prefix 'DH': DH02, DH06, DH12, DH13, DH15, WHBA, WHCA

As with everything, the presence of an alpha-prefix to a berth doesn’t necessarily mean it’s received from an adjacent TD.  For example, Fxxx and Rxxx berths (front and rear), as well as A, B, C and X-prefixed berths are usually related to bay platforms.  Also, there’s the Scottish variation on the theme - a lot of the berths around Edinburgh are prefixed with the last of the two letters from the signal, e.g. EC101 signal would have berth C101, ED234 would have berth D234.

When I look through my database, I don't see any activity on berths B101, B102 or B104 in the CA area. They may be inactive or purely historical by now. This leads me to a conclusion that berths that became historical at some point have not been completely removed from the SMART data.

From memory, I think many of the North London Line TDs used to report through either a TD Concentrator, or through Cambridge TD - hence Upper Holloway.  Although I’m unsure why Upper Holloway doesn’t report through South Tottenham, which is a fringe box - there may be historical reasons at play.

A quick check of the SMART data yesterday evening showed that there are in fact a number of STANOXes which are set to report through multiple TDs, so some of the data may be out-of-date.  However, as I pointed out yesterday, the data isn’t intended for things other than working out which berth steps equal which movement reports, but I am trying to find out who to report erroneous data to so that we can give something back and get it tidied up.

Peter

[Mike Playle]

On Tuesday, April 12, 2016 at 10:38:48 AM UTC+1, Juhani Pirttilahti wrote:

When I look through my database, I don't see any activity on berths B101, B102 or B104 in the CA area. They may be inactive or purely historical by now. This leads me to a conclusion that berths that became historical at some point have not been completely removed from the SMART data.

For my part I found that I started getting much more sensible results when I filtered the
SMART data to exclude any berths that I've never seen in the TD feed.

I suppose if there's old data in the system that isn't actually causing trouble for anyone
then it stays there until someone has a good reason to remove it!

Mike