Commercial grade none proprietary software to drive CIS

[Joe]

Hello,

Is there any none proprietary software available that TOC's could use which would do away with there need for a Worldline / Ketech feed/contract for CIS?

I understand the feed directly from DARWIN is not good enough and doesn't capture everything. 

My understanding of the feeds to CIS is that there is always a Worldline / Ketech feed required but if all the information TOCs have themselves is fed back into DARWIN. I can't understand what Worldline / Ketech are providing that justifies the price tag?

Thanks in advance,

Joe

[Peter Hicks]

Hi Joe

My $0.02: I see your thinking here.  The CIS supplier provides more than just the software - it's the interfaces to displays at stations, recording and updating the automated announcements (or "doing a Temu" and using Amazon Polly for that inauthentic, unsettling feeling), interfaces to DCIS, support, etc.

It would absolutely be possible for the rail industry to take something like this in-house.  LICC was, I think, a British Rail product before the privatisation in the 1990s and WebLICC is a modern, updated and rearchitected version of this.  The downside is that you will always need an organisation owning the specification, building and maintaining software and providing support for it.  It'll need ownership, as any Open Source project does.

What might be interesting would be to have an open architecture for CIS and associated systems.  An open, documented and extensible protocol for showing data on displays, an API for making audio announcements, etc.  The original BR1810 protocol (of which the TD S-Class and C-Class messages are a tiny subset) had scope to interface with customer-facing displays, but I'm not at all confident this is still in widespread use.

Maybe this is something for GBRX.

Peter

[David Wheatley]

Hi Joe,

I suppose it's something I've played around with on my websites, which can trigger live announcements and display upcoming services in a departure board style.

The main point of people like Worldline and KeTech are to sandwich all the data sources together, and provide a convenient system to manage it. That with installation, maintenance, upgrades, SLAs, etc, will always command a price tag.

I would probably say that Darwin has almost all the info needed these days, and someone with enough willpower could make an open source replacement. Often, the issues left with Darwin are that the TOCs aren't providing all the info they have to the open feeds (e.g., formation info is still missing for services today, service alerts like "full and standing" on depature boards not making it into the Darwin feed, SE/GR include rolling stock info on their CIS but that's not in Darwin).

David

[Edward Hesketh]

Hi David,

I'm currently working on my own open-source project to do something somewhat similar to what you describe here - it's still in its early stages, but I'm trying to create a service that can:

• read data from Darwin Push Port
• provide a nice endpoint to query current data relating to a train, station, specific platform, etc.
• provide a subscription feed for realtime update messages relating to trains/stations/platforms/etc.
• be simple to selfhost
• by well documented
• have easy to read code
• be easy to expand with more data sources in the future

It's certainly not a CIS solution in its entirety, but should be useful for reducing the work required for others to create stuff using realtime data. I want it to be the sort of thing that people would find easy to write a live frontend for (thinking: apps, websites, boards, announcements), which currently isn't so easy due to how Darwin outputs data.

The main purpose is just to generate messages with more meaning and context behind them - "location y is cancelled for train x" rather than "here's a new schedule for train x", and also to provide a nice way of querying train data from Darwin on demand. ("what are the IDs of all trains departing LEEDS in the next 10 minutes" or "what is the schedule of train ID x"?)

Just saw this thread and thought you might be glad to hear there is someone crazy enough to spend 130+ hours (so far) trying to make Darwin a little easier to work with.

It's on my github under headblockhead/railreader if anyone is interested - it's a long long way from being complete, but it's going well enough so far that I'm willing to share it publicly.

Sorry for derailing the thread a little, I'm just quite passionate about my project and wanted people to know that I was working on something related.

- EH

[Michael Tsang]

Hi EH,

Is your solution based on an international standard, for example, the European
standard using NeTEx / Transmodel / SIRI or the de-facto standard GTFS / GTFS-
RT?

Thanks,
Michael

On Friday, 12 September 2025 22:46:59 British Summer Time 'Edward Hesketh' via

A gathering place for the Open Rail Data community wrote:
> Hi David,
>
> I'm currently working on my own open-source project to do something
> somewhat similar to what you describe here - it's still in its early
> stages, but I'm trying to create a service that can:
>

> - read data from Darwin Push Port
> - provide a nice endpoint to query current data relating to a train,
> station, specific platform, etc.
> - provide a subscription feed for realtime update messages relating to
> trains/stations/platforms/etc.
> - be simple to selfhost
> - by well documented
> - have easy to read code
> - be easy to expand with more data sources in the future

>
> It's certainly not a CIS solution in its entirety, but should be useful for
> reducing the work required for others to create stuff using realtime data.
> I want it to be the sort of thing that people would find easy to write a
> live frontend for (thinking: apps, websites, boards, announcements), which
> currently isn't so easy due to how Darwin outputs data.
>
> The main purpose is just to generate messages with more meaning and context
> behind them - "location y is cancelled for train x" rather than "here's a
> new schedule for train x", and also to provide a nice way of querying train
> data from Darwin on demand. ("what are the IDs of all trains departing
> LEEDS in the next 10 minutes" or "what is the schedule of train ID x"?)
>
> Just saw this thread and thought you might be glad to hear there is someone
> crazy enough to spend 130+ hours (so far) trying to make Darwin a little
> easier to work with.
>
> It's on my github under headblockhead/railreader

> <https://github.com/headblockhead/railreader> if anyone is interested -
> it's a long *long* way from being complete, but it's going well enough so

[Edward Hesketh]

Hi Michael!

To answer your question immediately: No, but it looks like it could be worthwhile to implement.

I didn't know that there are existing open standards for this type of data exchange (although I probably should've assumed that there would be) - but GTFS+GTFS-RT actually looks pretty useful!

I was close to starting work on my API, so your email has just been extremely helpful; I will look further into GTFS(-RT) as an output format, and see if I can generate it. I think my program would be significantly more useful if it generated an existing international format.

However, I'm slightly concerned about losing some of the more specialized data that comes out of Darwin, like train carriage division, link associations, or toilet type+status. I might have to decide between international interoperability and full detail, or possibly have multiple similar but slightly different output formats.

Just to be completely clear, this is a passion project of mine that is being created in my free time, so there are no guarantees here, but I might be able to implement this.

- EH

[Michael Tsang]

Hi EH,

We are working in Aubin MaaS Limited to create a GTFS-RT feed. It isn't quite
feature complete yet (for example, we haven't included carriage information)
and we are working to make it available on Rail Data Marketplace sometime in
the future.

Our long term goal is to get all available information into GTFS-RT as there
are proposals for the standard to include such information.

Thanks,
Michael

On Monday, 29 September 2025 19:21:13 British Summer Time Edward Hesketh
wrote:

> Hi Michael!
>
> To answer your question immediately: No, but it looks like it could be
> worthwhile to implement.
>
> I didn't know that there are existing open standards for this type of
> data exchange (although I probably should've assumed that there would
> be) - but GTFS+GTFS-RT actually looks pretty useful!
> I was close to starting work on my API, so your email has just been
> extremely helpful; I will look further into GTFS(-RT) as an output
> format, and see if I can generate it. I think my program would be
> significantly more useful if it generated an existing international format.
>
> However, I'm slightly concerned about losing some of the more
> specialized data that comes out of Darwin, like train carriage division,
> link associations, or toilet type+status. I might have to decide between

> /international interoperability /and /full detail/, or possibly have

> multiple similar but slightly different output formats.
>
> Just to be completely clear, this is a passion project of mine that is
> being created in my free time, so there are no guarantees here, but I
> might be able to implement this.
>
> - EH
>

[Michael Tsang]

Hi Peter,

HSL (Helsinki Regional Transport) has a completely in-house, open source CIS
solution which is based on the de-facto international GTFS standard and open-
source OpenTripPlanner software. OpenTripPlanner contains all the necessary
APIs required to power a CIS, using consumer-grade hardware and terminals.
(They even have the open-source product available to display a departure board
in your web browser, which is the exact same thing used in their train
stations)

I believe that international collaboration will benefit the public transport
industry as a whole, as the same solution can be used across all public
transport in the world.

Thanks,
Michael

On Thursday, 11 September 2025 12:40:58 British Summer Time 'Peter Hicks' via

A gathering place for the Open Rail Data community wrote: