What is the differnce between NROD and darwin

[Andrew Powell]

Hi

I did some work with NROD in the past but am looking at darwin

What does darwin provide that nrod doesnt?

Many thanks

Andrew

[Peter Hicks]

Hi Andrew

The Network Rail feeds are railway-oriented and have a lot of data at a very low level.  They require a lot of processing and knowledge of the railway, and are generally accurate some time after the event, but not necessarily before.  For example, cancellations can be reported in advance on TRUST (pre-cancellations), but a cancellation message won't appear until the train reaches the location it's being cancelled at.

The Darwin (National Rail Enquiries) feeds are passenger information-oriented and have just passenger services, but also contain forecasts for arrival times, and better information on cancellations, part-cancellations, diversions etc. than the Network Rail feeds.  The feed is also the same one that most, if not all, CIS at stations use to provide information.

To summarise - if your concern is accurate and consistent information for passengers, use the Darwin feeds.  If your concern is a deeper understanding of movements, or you want to include non-passenger trains, use the Network Rail feeds.

Incidentally, I don't think there's any value in using both for customer information purposes - you'll not be consistent with Darwin and confuse your users when they see an 'alternative' version of the truth.

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.

[Andrew Powell]

Thanks Peter, felt stupid for asking lol, but really useful

Many thanks

Andrew

[Mike Playle]

On Friday, July 8, 2016 at 9:38:42 AM UTC+1, Peter Hicks wrote:

Incidentally, I don't think there's any value in using both for customer information purposes - you'll not be consistent with Darwin and confuse your users when they see an 'alternative' version of the truth. 

I would like my app to be able to display the timetable for the coming days/weeks/months as well as the trains that are running right now. Surely the CIF and VSTP feeds are the right way to do this?

Mike

[Peter Hicks]

Hi Mike

CIF is - there's nothing stopping you from showing what's planned >48h in advance using data from CIF.  I wouldn't recommend you integrate VSTP - the purpose of VSTP is to allow for short-notice amendments to the timetable, usually within the next 48 hours.  Passenger trains are entered via VSTP so they appear correctly on Network Rail's systems for billing and running the network, but Darwin doesn't take VSTP and instead takes feeds from other systems run by train operators.

Peter