Passing points missing from CIF data?

[Martin Keller]

Hello everyone,

I'm currently looking at the CIF schedule data from the SCHEDULE feed and I noticed that for some trains, a whole lot of passing TIPLOCs are missing.

As an example, the schedule for the 16:45 London Waterloo to Portsmouth Harbour service taken from the "top-full.CIF" file downloaded today begins 

with the following information:

London Waterloo:  Departure  16:45 

Clapham Junction: Passing     16:52 

Wimbledon:            Passing     16:57 

New Malden:          Passing     16:59 

Surbiton:                 Passing     17:01:30

A number of stations this train has to physically pass through on its journey are missing from this schedule (Vauxhall, Earlsfield, Raynes Park, etc.). Is this 

something that I should expect from the CIF schedule data? Is there an additional data source that contains the schedule data for the points that are missing?

Any help would be much appreciated.

[Peter Hicks]

Hi Martin

Schedule data doesn't include all locations the train passes - only those which are mandatory timing points.

The rule is that a train must be timed at a location where it carries out an activity (even if it's a non-public activity, such as stopping to change power at North Pole on the West London Line), or where that location is a mandatory timing point.

Peter

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "A gathering place for the Open Rail Data community" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to openraildata-t...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to openrail...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

OpenTrainTimes Ltd. registered in England and Wales, company no. 09504022.

Registered office: 13a Davenant Road, Upper Holloway, London N19 3NW

[Martin Keller]

Hi Peter,

thanks for your quick reply. I'm trying to get a full view of a train's scheduled and actual movement on the rail network right now. For that I need 

to get the scheduled and actual times at every point a train produces a report.

Do you know if it's possible to infer the "implied" schedule times at intermediate locations for a service from the sectional running times in the reference data? Has

anyone tried to do that yet?

P.S. Incidentally, I've been wondering about why North Pole is in the schedule data for some time now. Thanks for clarifying that :)

[Peter Hicks]

Hi Martin

On Wed, 16 May 2018 at 10:27 Martin Keller <sch...@gmail.com> wrote:

thanks for your quick reply. I'm trying to get a full view of a train's scheduled and actual movement on the rail network right now. For that I need to get the scheduled and actual times at every point a train produces a report.

TRUST won't produce a report for a location where the train isn't timed - except in a very few specific circumstances such as at Weybridge - a mandatory timing point for trains on the slow lines, but not on the fast lines.

Do you know if it's possible to infer the "implied" schedule times at intermediate locations for a service from the sectional running times in the reference data? Has anyone tried to do that yet?

RealTimeTrains does this, but it's not based on sectional running times and therefore is a guess, rather than being calculated from data.

SRTs exist as pass-to-pass, pass-to-stop, stop-to-pass and stop-to-stop times.  There aren't pass-to-* or *-to-pass times for non-mandatory timing points, because there's no need to time a train which passes somewhere that doesn't require a time, and passes another location that doesn't require a time.  For example, there is no pass-to-pass time between Watford Junction and Kings Langley, only a stop-to-stop SRT exists, as Kings Langley is not a mandatory timing point.

You might well find that adding up the stop-to-stop SRTs between Watford and Kings Langley, then Kings Langley - Apsley and Apsley - Hemel Hempstead is greater than the stop-to-stop SRT between Watford Junction and Hemel Hempstead, because negative acceleration isn't taken in to account.

If you knew the distance between stations - say, from the Sectional Appendix, and the line speed, you could make a guess as to how long it'd take a train to get from one location to another.  SRTs vary according to the characteristics of the traction used, so even if the line speed is 110mph, a Class 08 shunter would still trundle along at 15mph top speed.

Peter

[Martin Keller]

On Wednesday, 16 May 2018 10:39:50 UTC+1, Peter Hicks wrote:

Hi Martin

On Wed, 16 May 2018 at 10:27 Martin Keller <sch...@gmail.com> wrote:

thanks for your quick reply. I'm trying to get a full view of a train's scheduled and actual movement on the rail network right now. For that I need to get the scheduled and actual times at every point a train produces a report.

TRUST won't produce a report for a location where the train isn't timed - except in a very few specific circumstances such as at Weybridge - a mandatory timing point for trains on the slow lines, but not on the fast lines.

Do you know if it's possible to infer the "implied" schedule times at intermediate locations for a service from the sectional running times in the reference data? Has anyone tried to do that yet?

RealTimeTrains does this, but it's not based on sectional running times and therefore is a guess, rather than being calculated from data.

SRTs exist as pass-to-pass, pass-to-stop, stop-to-pass and stop-to-stop times.  There aren't pass-to-* or *-to-pass times for non-mandatory timing points, because there's no need to time a train which passes somewhere that doesn't require a time, and passes another location that doesn't require a time.  For example, there is no pass-to-pass time between Watford Junction and Kings Langley, only a stop-to-stop SRT exists, as Kings Langley is not a mandatory timing point.

That makes sense. I guess the only way to get this data would be to estimate it via Train Movements or TD data...

 

You might well find that adding up the stop-to-stop SRTs between Watford and Kings Langley, then Kings Langley - Apsley and Apsley - Hemel Hempstead is greater than the stop-to-stop SRT between Watford Junction and Hemel Hempstead, because negative acceleration isn't taken in to account.

I would be more than surprised if they actually added up :)

[Tom Cairns]

Hi all

 

On 16/05/2018, 10:39, "openrail...@googlegroups.com on behalf of Peter Hicks" <openrail...@googlegroups.com on behalf of peter...@poggs.co.uk> wrote:

 

Do you know if it's possible to infer the "implied" schedule times at intermediate locations for a service from the sectional running times in the reference data? Has anyone tried to do that yet?

 

RealTimeTrains does this, but it's not based on sectional running times and therefore is a guess, rather than being calculated from data.

 

If you knew the distance between stations - say, from the Sectional Appendix, and the line speed, you could make a guess as to how long it'd take a train to get from one location to another.  SRTs vary according to the characteristics of the traction used, so even if the line speed is 110mph, a Class 08 shunter would still trundle along at 15mph top speed.

 

Realtime Trains does calculate implied times from the schedules by using distances between stations, derived from multiple sources including the sectional appendix and also more recently the network model, and also calibrates them using the times from TD. Broadly speaking, it calculates the distance, calculates the linear timing and then adds factors for stop/start, etc.

 

It is worth noting that this broadly only works for normal passenger trains, anything like ECS movements or railtours that can take more esoteric routes (Harringay Park chord comes to mind) can be somewhat painful and we have sanity checks in place to stop (most) trains looking like they’re going via Timbuktu – said sanity check does however catch out mainline services on the WCML where their SRTs imply an average speed of 140mph+ between mandatory timing points on the down around Cheddington.

 

Tom

[Martin Keller]

On Wednesday, 16 May 2018 11:18:50 UTC+1, Tom Cairns wrote:

Hi all

 

On 16/05/2018, 10:39, "openrail...@googlegroups.com on behalf of Peter Hicks" <openrail...@googlegroups.com on behalf of peter...@poggs.co.uk> wrote:

 

Do you know if it's possible to infer the "implied" schedule times at intermediate locations for a service from the sectional running times in the reference data? Has anyone tried to do that yet?

 

RealTimeTrains does this, but it's not based on sectional running times and therefore is a guess, rather than being calculated from data.

 

If you knew the distance between stations - say, from the Sectional Appendix, and the line speed, you could make a guess as to how long it'd take a train to get from one location to another.  SRTs vary according to the characteristics of the traction used, so even if the line speed is 110mph, a Class 08 shunter would still trundle along at 15mph top speed.

 

Realtime Trains does calculate implied times from the schedules by using distances between stations, derived from multiple sources including the sectional appendix and also more recently the network model, and also calibrates them using the times from TD. Broadly speaking, it calculates the distance, calculates the linear timing and then adds factors for stop/start, etc.

Do you mean the Train Planning Network Model? I briefly looked at that data and it looked rather intimidating...do you know of a good reference to get started with that data?