IMPORTANT: Changes to timetable publications

[Peter Hicks]

All,

I've been notified by Network Rail about some changes happening to the publication of schedules in the CIF (and therefore JSON format) timetable files.  This is part of the Extended Booking Horizon project, which looks to publish timetables further in advance so Advance tickets could be sold sooner than the current windows.

The December 2026 timetable is going to be published starting 12th June.  The May 2027 timetable is planned to be published around 13th November, meaning that there will be a period of time where you will have the May 2026 timetable, the December 2026 and May 2027 timetables.

As a result, CIF full extracts for Open Data users will be around 33% larger for a period of time, and your downstream systems may need additional capacity (storage and compute) to process this data.  No need to panic or worry, this won't be November though.

Best wishes,

Peter