Train facilities (Darwin formations, CTI, RARS, etc)

[Evelyn Snow]

Hi all,

I'll preface this by saying that I'm mostly complaining, rather than requesting information.

We still don't have any particularly good real-time information on facilities on board services. Even in Darwin, not providing the
length of a train is normal, and only a small number of operators have formations information, usually on a subset
of services, with an even smaller number publishing information on train loading. There's historically been some accuracy issues
with formations, I'm unsure how the situation is now, it doesn't help that the quality of this information provided through Darwin
is largely inconsequential to operators.

I've been consolidating the documentation on NRDP on the wiki, and happened across references to CTI (Connecting Train Identifiers),
an API and feed which corresponds services to identifiers for the trains running them. It was planned in 2018, added to NRDP in 2019 along
with CIGP (Customer Information GPS Platform), and then never offered to open data users, a last-minute reversal. Not much justification
has been offered beyond security, and operator reluctance, ironic considering the joint rail data action plan. The only information
I was able to find on these came from talking to Peter, looking through the mailing list archive, and the joint rail data action plan
itself.

The NRDP article explains the background on CTI/CIGP as I understand it, corrections are very much welcome.
https://wiki.openraildata.com/National_Rail_Data_Portal#CIGP_and_CTI

Finally, on the RDM, there's an interesting feed offered by RDG (You may be noticing a pattern here), named "Coaches, Seats, and
Seat Properties". On the face of it, it's a daily feed based on RARS covering coaches and seats expected on services for the day,
something which could provide useful additional information, potentially more accurate and complete than available through Darwin.
The licence type is listed as "Open", although requires the information to be used only for "internal business purposes", and
applications are subject to individual approval (I applied two weeks ago, but I've not yet been approved or rejected, for what
it's worth)

https://raildata.org.uk/dashboard/dataProduct/P-c58b8099-974f-4f44-b18d-38079d925768/overview

The possible use cases for this data vary depending on the exact type and quality, though a compelling (and rather new) example would
be combining the fleet accessibility spreadsheets a number of operators have now published on the RDM with train identifiers.

I can understand that there's reasonable security concerns around real-time train loading data for example, but the lack of progress on
real-time facilities information is rather disappointing.

Evelyn

[RailAleFan]

Established industry suppliers do not want this information to be open so we are left with half arsed data.

[Peter Hicks]

...yet TOCs let RTT at their consist data

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[Oscar Harris]

Hi Evelyn,

Finally, on the RDM, there's an interesting feed offered by RDG (You may be noticing a pattern here), named "Coaches, Seats, and
Seat Properties". On the face of it, it's a daily feed based on RARS covering coaches and seats expected on services for the day,
something which could provide useful additional information, potentially more accurate and complete than available through Darwin.
The licence type is listed as "Open", although requires the information to be used only for "internal business purposes", and
applications are subject to individual approval (I applied two weeks ago, but I've not yet been approved or rejected, for what
it's worth)

Unfortunately I don't think feed is as useful as you might think. It doesn't map RSIDs to their data, it maps RARS coach identifiers instead (and gives a single example RSID which contains that coach), so to use it you would need to somehow have access to get the coach IDs for an RSID from RARS. I'm also not convinced it gives you much useful at a coach level, only at a seat level (which you could try to infer up from, but it would be a pain). It's primarily useful for making seat maps, I'm not sure how much else you could do with it.

It also suffers from the fact that even when you do get approved, it has (as far as I can tell) no way to programmatically download the files, it can only be downloaded from the web UI.

Kind regards,

Oscar

[Evelyn Snow]

Hi Oscar,

Disappointing to learn that it doesn't fully map RSIDs, I should have seen that
coming from the documentation though.

If it did, then it could possibly be used to approximate a lot of the information
missing from Darwin, but since it doesn't - alas - it's not likely to be much use
for that.

Evelyn

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[QRail Comms]

And don't forget the FOC's as well are happy to give over there data as well... The same FOC's & established industry suppliers who thought the sky would fall with in the clear head codes and and TSC's...

These established industry suppliers should be grateful that they are still suppliers given some of the high quality work people here have produced (Maybe that's why there so afraid to allow data to be open as it will break there monopolies)

[Adam Williams]

> happened across references to CTI (Connecting Train Identifiers), an API and feed which corresponds services to identifiers for the trains running them [...] never offered to open data users, a last-minute reversal

> Established industry suppliers do not want this information to be open so we are left with half arsed data.

> ...yet TOCs let RTT at their consist data

Sorry to bump a slightly older thread, but (and setting aside my thoughts on RDM) temporarily - I've noticed that RDG are now tracking "Data Wants" on the platform which can be commented on and voted on.

https://raildata.org.uk/dashboard/want/W-abeea518-390d-47a2-8533-55e6fcb3ac32 is the "Data Want" for opening up allocations from (Web)Gemini, which I would encourage interested parties to vote and comment on.

On Tuesday 19 December 2023 at 17:24:02 UTC QRail Comms wrote:

And don't forget the FOC's as well are happy to give over there data as well... The same FOC's & established industry suppliers who thought the sky would fall with in the clear head codes and and TSC's...

These established industry suppliers should be grateful that they are still suppliers given some of the high quality work people here have produced (Maybe that's why there so afraid to allow data to be open as it will break there monopolies)

On Monday, December 18, 2023 at 11:06:38 PM UTC Peter Hicks wrote:

...yet TOCs let RTT at their consist data

[Gaelan Steele]

On Apr 11, 2024, at 11:32 AM, 'Adam Williams' via A gathering place for the Open Rail Data community <openrail...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Sorry to bump a slightly older thread, but (and setting aside my thoughts on RDM) temporarily - I've noticed that RDG are now tracking "Data Wants" on the platform which can be commented on and voted on.

https://raildata.org.uk/dashboard/want/W-abeea518-390d-47a2-8533-55e6fcb3ac32 is the "Data Want" for opening up allocations from (Web)Gemini, which I would encourage interested parties to vote and comment on.

There’s actually two separate threads for CTI/Gemini data:

https://raildata.org.uk/dashboard/want/W-311c3032-358f-4b07-b00b-4d7c979a9a65

I’ve voted for both.

Gaelan

[Evelyn Snow]

I'd encourage voting on both! these are different proposals, but either could offer significant
improvement in this area.

Evelyn

On Thu, Apr 11, 2024 at 11:34:11AM +0100, Gaelan Steele wrote:
>
>
> On Apr 11, 2024, at 11:32 AM, 'Adam Williams' via A gathering place for the
> Open Rail Data community <openrail...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Sorry to bump a slightly older thread, but (and setting aside my thoughts
> on RDM) temporarily - I've noticed that RDG are now tracking "Data Wants"
> on the platform which can be commented on and voted on.
> https://raildata.org.uk/dashboard/want/

> W-abeea518-390d-47a2-8533-55e6fcb3ac32 is the "Data Want" for opening up