Where to find a list of group CRS codes?

[Jon Cox]

Hi,

I'm looking into how the OJP webservice works. In the Journey Planner on the National Rail Enquires app and website you can select 'stations' such as London (All Stations) or Manchester (All Stations), and then in the SOAP message body it will set the origin to:

<jpd:origin>

<com:groupCRS>182</com:groupCRS>

</jpd:origin>

Instead of:

<jpd:origin>

<com:stationCRS>KGX</com:stationCRS>

</jpd:origin>

(as it would do for a specific station CRS).

In the app I can see there are A LOT of these All Stations towns/cities. However I can't find a reference to a list of all the possible groupCRS codes.

I've been using the Stations XML Knowledgebase data to populate my list of stations (found here http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/100298.aspx and documented here http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/static/documents/Stations%20XML%20Feed.pdf ), but that makes no mention anywhere of groupCRS codes.

Does anyone know where you might find a list of such groupCRS codes?

[Paul Kelly]

On 06/04/18 12:57, Jon Cox wrote:
>
> Does anyone know where you might find a list of such *groupCRS* codes?

My understanding thing is that they are a proprietary IPTIS thing
(SilverRail IPTIS is the underlying journey planner engine used by
National Rail Enquiries), and don't correspond to anything official in
the data feed and aren't used by other systems either.

Paul

[Jon Cox]

Oh right, that's annoying. Thanks for the information though :)

Jon

[Alistair Lees]

These numeric ones might well be proprietary. They are not very helpful for customers anyway.

There are also three letter codes for group stations in a (relatively) new file in the IDMS data. They were created in order to populate the three-character fields on eTickets (like airline tickets o your phone - using PDF or pkpass) which would otherwise have a large blank space for a ticket to "London Terminals" for instance. 

I can't see that you can use those in OJP queries though.

[Rail Delivery Group]

Groups often cause confusion as there are a number of different types. For example, the fares data supports fare groups, zonal groups, county groups and clusters (and probably others I've forgotten!) and each has their own set of rules regarding usage. However, the question here relates to the OJP journey planner and timetable groups, which are completely separate from fare groups.

As answered above, NRE's OJP uses SilverRail's journey planning engine and SilverRail provide a concept within their journey planner of timetable groups, which group together stations for journey planning purposes (usually stations with a common name and close geography although in principle they can be any locations). These timetable groups are essentially aliases for multiple stations, allowing a single location to be specified that results in multiple locations being searched - so for example, when specifying Birmingham (all stations) timetable group the SilverRail journey planning engine actually journey plans to/from Birmingham New Street, Snow Hill and Moor Street to find journey options.

These timetable groups may coincidently have similar names to fare groups (e.g. Croydon (All Stations) timetable group and Croydon Stations fare group) but the members are independent and may or may not include the same locations as a fare group (e.g. the  Croydon (All Stations) timetable group includes South Croydon whereas the Croydon stations fare group does not). Equally, there may be a fare group with no similar timetable group or a timetable group with no similar fare group (e.g. Coulsdon (All Stations) is a timetable group but there is no Coulsdon fare group).

Whilst the OJP API isn't free for use (RDG passes on the transaction charge we get from SilverRail for using their journey planning engine) it is open in the sense that anyone can request access as long as they accept the T&C's for usage (see http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/100299.aspx) so I will see if our agreement with SilverRail allows us to add the SilverRail group data to the Open Wiki. This would be static and subject to manual updating but it changes very infrequently so would be fit for use until/unless we can get SilverRail data into an open data source.

[Jon Cox]

Thank you for your detailed response. I feel I better understand the concept of groups of stations and the different types of groups now.

I very much appreciate you checking to see if the timetable group data can be made open. As much as possible I'm trying to get the information shown in my app to match exactly the information NRE shows.

One final question, do you happen to have any contacts that could help get an OJP data feeds license? I put in a request for one back in January and have followed it up with a few emails, but so far have had no response back.

Jon

[Rail Delivery Group]

I believe there has been some issues with the email address that was on the NRE site (emails were disappearing into an internet black hole somewhere so we weren't getting them!) so its recently been replaced with data...@nationalrail.co.uk. Sending your request through to that should hopefully get things moving...

[Jon Cox]

Okay thanks, I'll try that email address again (I noticed it had changed on the website a couple of months ago and tried it then, but perhaps it wasn't fully set up at that point). 

Thanks for your help, fingers crossed things get moving soon :)