LDBWS Departures API returning 500 errors

[Sam Carty]

Hi,

For the past few days I've been experiencing intermittent 500 responses from the Live Departure Board APIs.

I've observed this at MAN (Manchester Piccadilly) and PAD (London Paddington) stations, seeming to last around 30-40 minutes before normal responses are then received again. For example, at MAN today between 17:58 and 18:35 I was receiving 500 responses.

I've not made any changes to the configuration on my end and I've not seen this behaviour before this week.

Has anyone else been experiencing issues recently?

Thanks

[Sam Carty]

Just to add, it looks like these intermittent errors began on 11th August at around 12:11pm (BST)

[David Wheatley]

We've been seeing some 500s since 12th too.

They do reliably reproduce, but I've not found any clear reason for it either.

We also get some responses which aren't 500s but are missing crucial data in the response which causes an error on our end. I've added more logging this afternoon before your email to get some insight into what these responses actually look like!

Cheers,

David

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "A gathering place for the Open Rail Data community" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to openraildata-t...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/openraildata-talk/f18c26d2-50d9-4f7f-bcd3-e3e0528e6667n%40googlegroups.com.

[RailAleFan]

It seems to be specific locations that 500 any requests for extended periods.  London Liverpool Street (LST) seems to be out more frequently that other locations for some reason.  At time of posting, Brighton (BTN) is not working...

[Peter Hicks]

On Saturday, 15 August 2026 at 10:15, RailAleFan <raila...@gmail.com> wrote:

It seems to be specific locations that 500 any requests for extended periods. London Liverpool Street (LST) seems to be out more frequently that other locations for some reason. At time of posting, Brighton (BTN) is not working...

Is anyone able to send me a SOAP request that reliably fails?

Peter

[RailAleFan]

Hi Peter,

OpenLDBWS is working OK (at least for Brighton at this time)

The 500 errors I am currently seeing are on the RDM REST version currently e.g.

https://api1.****/1010-live-departure-board-dep1_2/LDBWS/api/20220120/GetDepBoardWithDetails/BTN?numRows=0

[Mark Jenkins]

Hi Sam, 

May be related - if you're testing via a simulator watch that the device date/time hasn't drifted.   My app reloads using current time and I've been testing RDM just recently with Android TV.  The simulator regularly lags its clock to when you last opened it rather than syncing to current, even with synching to time server enabled.  

When the date/time was misaligned I was getting errors back from RDM (including some 500s).  Soon as I sorted the date/time the errors went away.  My guess is I was making requests in the past.

Cheers

Mark

[Sam Carty]

Currently seeing this again with FMR station using this REST endpoint, when performing a Postman request (no path parameters with odd times or anything)

/1010-live-departure-board-dep1_2/LDBWS/api/20220120/GetDepBoardWithDetails/FMR

[Peter Hicks]

On Saturday, 15 August 2026 at 17:46, Sam Carty <samca...@gmail.com> wrote:

Currently seeing this again with FMR station using this REST endpoint, when performing a Postman request (no path parameters with odd times or anything)

/1010-live-departure-board-dep1_2/LDBWS/api/20220120/GetDepBoardWithDetails/FMR

From personal experience the API proxying functionality of RDM sends back a 500 error if any error has been received from the upstream server.  Not a plug, but the Rail Date API that I have available through RDM requires the date in YYYY-MM-DD format, and returns an RFC9457 style error message with a description of the error in an HTTP 400 response.  RDM will then throw this back to the caller as a 500 error, with no body and no indication of what's wrong.

Since the OpenLDBWS is working in general, I suspect the problem is purely with the API that the RDM calls.

If you haven't already, can you log a ticket with RDM Support, please?

Best wishes,

Peter

[Dorada]

I have a similar issues with the ServiceDetails OpenLDBWS SOAP call, some particular services are just returning a 500 ever since the Darwin Evolution go live. I do have a case open with the help desk but no helpful response so far.

===== REQUEST =====

Time: 2026-08-16T08:15:15+00:00

PHP: 8.5.3

Endpoint: https://lite.realtime.nationalrail.co.uk/OpenLDBWS/ldb12.asmx

SOAPAction: http://thalesgroup.com/RTTI/2012-01-13/ldb/GetServiceDetails

SOAP version: 1.1

Token namespace: http://thalesgroup.com/RTTI/2013-11-28/Token/types (official)

Service ID: 7785576PHBR____

Proxy: none

HTTP basic auth: yes

Request headers:

  Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8

  SOAPAction: "http://thalesgroup.com/RTTI/2012-01-13/ldb/GetServiceDetails"

SOAP envelope:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:ns1="http://thalesgroup.com/RTTI/2021-11-01/ldb/" xmlns:ns2="http://thalesgroup.com/RTTI/2013-11-28/Token/types">

  <SOAP-ENV:Header>

    <ns2:AccessToken>

      <ns2:TokenValue><REDACTED></ns2:TokenValue>

    </ns2:AccessToken>

  </SOAP-ENV:Header>

  <SOAP-ENV:Body>

    <ns1:GetServiceDetailsRequest>

      <ns1:serviceID>7785576PHBR____</ns1:serviceID>

    </ns1:GetServiceDetailsRequest>

  </SOAP-ENV:Body>

</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>

===== RESPONSE =====

HTTP status: 500

Duration: 144 ms

Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8

Response headers:

  HTTP/2 500

  date: Sun, 16 Aug 2026 08:15:15 GMT

  content-type: text/xml; charset=utf-8

  content-length: 365

  cache-control: private

  server: Microsoft-IIS/10.0

  x-aspnet-version: 4.0.30319

  x-powered-by: ASP.NET

Response body:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">

  <soap:Body>

    <soap:Fault>

      <faultcode>soap:Server</faultcode>

      <faultstring>Unexpected server error</faultstring>

      <detail/>

    </soap:Fault>

  </soap:Body>

</soap:Envelope>

[Peter Hicks]

On Sunday, 16 August 2026 at 09:16, Dorada <broad....@gmail.com> wrote:

I have a similar issues with the ServiceDetails OpenLDBWS SOAP call, some particular services are just returning a 500 ever since the Darwin Evolution go live. I do have a case open with the help desk but no helpful response so far.

Please keep us updated here with your progress - if nothing else, it shows who and what is impacted, which is something that can be easy to miss for a helpdesk.

Peter

[Terence Eden]

I've also been having this issue since around the 12th.

"PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught SoapFault exception: [WSDL] SOAP-ERROR: Parsing WSDL: Couldn't load from 'http://lite.realtime.nationalrail.co.uk/OpenLDBWS/wsdl.aspx' : failed to load external entity "http://lite.realtime.nationalrail.co.uk/OpenLDBWS/wsdl.aspx""

I'm using the phpOpenLDBWS. My code is simply:

require("OpenLDBWS.php");
$OpenLDBWS = new OpenLDBWS($API_key);
$response = $OpenLDBWS->GetDepBoardWithDetails(20, "ABW", "LBG", "to");

On Friday, 14 August 2026 at 18:40:59 UTC+1 Sam Carty wrote:

[RailAleFan]

Hello Terrence,

The wsdl is no longer available over http, the URL just needs to be changed to https at line 20 of OpenLDBWS.php

$this->soapClient = new SoapClient("https://lite.realtime.nationalrail.co.uk/OpenLDBWS/wsdl.aspx",$soapOptions);

Should be all it is...

[David Wheatley]

As an FYI, I reported two other LDB-related issues last night to the NRE service desk, as I believe they coincided with the Evolution rollout. We only use LDBSVWS, so I don't know if these affect LDBWS too.

- isTruncated no longer gets returned when there are more services in the given time window and the response has been capped by maxRows

- non-passenger charter services appear when clients do not request non-passenger services (or explicitly request them to be omitted)

I haven't reported the 500s yet, as I'm yet to check some improved logs related to these.

David

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "A gathering place for the Open Rail Data community" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to openraildata-t...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/openraildata-talk/2cef6498-f611-4742-b7ea-62f5896426dan%40googlegroups.com.

[RailAleFan]

I've just reported the 500s on LDBWS to RDM support (ticket RDM0003494)