CIF End User Specification

[Ian Sargent]

The Open Rail Wiki has CIF End User Specification v29...

https://wiki.openraildata.com/index.php?title=File:CIF_End_User_Spec_v29.pdf

I understand from elsewhere that v30 was issued eariker this year. Is it publicly available? I can't see anything on the Network Rail website, despite it being the document's publisher.

[Jack Brewer]

Your best bet is to put in a FOI request and see if NR will publish it.

Other than some wording changes the only real change is to the activity codes in appendix A.

Regards,

Jack

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[Peter Hicks]

Hi Ian

v30 was issued in 2022.  The updates are minor - changes to Appendix A, so I'm guessing an update of TOC codes.

If you went with Jack's suggestion of making an FOI request, you could just ask for Appendix A to save a lot of time and effort with NR having to decide whether to redact the rest of the data.  Alternatively, you could look at the latest BPLAN data, which should (used with the appropriate level of wry grin) have the codes in a machine-readable format. 

Peter

[Ian Sargent]

v30 wasn't issued in 2022. I think what you may have seen was the document that was put out for consulatation to various parties. When I retired from the rail industry in 2024 the finalised version was still awaiting authorisation within NR.

[Peter Hicks]

On Thursday, 27 August 2026 at 15:09, Ian Sargent <sargenor...@gmail.com> wrote:

v30 wasn't issued in 2022. I think what you may have seen was the document that was put out for consulatation to various parties. When I retired from the rail industry in 2024 the finalised version was still awaiting authorisation within NR.

This looks like a version control issue.  I have a file 'CIF USER SPEC v30 FINAL.pdf' issued March 2022, as well as a separate file in a newer NR template - same version 30, issued January 2025.  I haven't yet been issued with an official v30, but I think the work-in-progress versions should have been labelled something other than v30!

From the changelog, the proposed alterations were minor.  Appendix A was updated with the ATOC codes in TPS, but everything else is updates to software, system or team names or contact email addresses, the addition of SFTP as a delivery mechanism, and removal of CD-ROM as a delivery mechanism.  No changes to the actual format of the CIF itself.

So, v29 still appears to be the latest and I won't delve in to what's holding up approval, or why I haven't been sent an updated version!

Peter

[Tom Cairns]

I received an email from NR with consultations about v30 in September last year… unless that should have been v31.

 

Tom

 

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