Missing Darwin daily timetable through RDM

[Seb Dazeley]

Hi all

I receive the daily Darwin Timetable Files from RDM through SFTP. Overnight every new file was transferred correctly except the one I needed, the timetable file in the most recent v8 format PPTimetable/20260421020459_v8.xml.gz. It is on the RDM website so I've manually downloaded it.

Has anyone else had a single missing timetable file last night? Or ever?

I will raise a ticket with RDM if this happens again and/or consider sourcing the base timetable elsewhere.

Thanks

Seb

[Peter Hicks]

Hi Seb

Use the Darwin timetable with Darwin.  Don't use any other timetable source - you will run in to problems, and also be inconsistent with the information held in Darwin, thus creating confusion for downstream users.

Peter

[Seb Dazeley]

Peter 

Thanks for that - I can't remember where but I'd read that it's possible to use the CIF timetable as a base. 

As there's no other replies I'll assume it was just me with this issue. For future reference, the destination is on a Hetzner storage box through SFTP. 

Seb 

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[Oscar Harris]

Hi Seb,

Afraid we don't use the RDM variant so can't say if we saw that issue or not.

Thanks for that - I can't remember where but I'd read that it's possible to use the CIF timetable as a base. 

You might expect this to be the case! But Darwin unfortunately messes with the base timetable from the CIF in ways that can cause problems here.

The one that comes to my mind first is when a TOC cancels a service in Darwin using its extended horizon feature (so before it is published in the Darwin timetable), Darwin will simply omit the service when it does come to publish the timetable for that day instead of correctly publishing a cancelled schedule. Anyone using the CIF as a base would [arguably correctly] show there was a service running as planned, and would just never receive any realtime updates for it. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples of similar behaviour that would cause you issues.

Plenty of us working with both Darwin data and services beyond its horizon already do this and have no choice but to put up with these issues - broadly it does work. But there are definitely gotchas and drawbacks you need to be aware of.

Kind regards,

Oscar

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[Seb Dazeley]

Thanks for that info Oscar. I'll stay away from the extended horizon for now I think...

Unfortunately (or fortunately if it makes it easier to debug) yesterday the v8 timetable didn't transfer and today the all timetables (including v8) did transfer but none of the reference files came through. Which would be fine, I expect they don't change often, but as I wrote my code based on the precedent that they do come through every day nothing got imported overnight...

I did open a ticket with RDM yesterday.

Kind regards, 

Seb 

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