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Rail Staging site not showing freight or charter services

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Temple Meads

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Fair dos when is the most freight due through in the SW (what time of year) so i know which one to potentially go for ?

For the amount of freight that runs west of Bristol, you only need the fingers on one hand :lol:

Seems about the same all year round IMO, I cant remember if Freightmaster has RHTT trains, but if it does, Autumn would be busiest!

For me the Freightmaster subscription is 2 or 3 major trips out, so I'm not going be signing up any time soon (sorry Mark ;) )
 
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221129

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For the amount of freight that runs west of Bristol, you only need the fingers on one hand :lol:

Seems about the same all year round IMO, I cant remember if Freightmaster has RHTT trains, but if it does, Autumn would be busiest!

For me the Freightmaster subscription is 2 or 3 major trips out, so I'm not going be signing up any time soon (sorry Mark ;) )

Fair dos Lol and for me its even more trips out LOL
 

Poggs

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Sorry to all but i am still slightly confused about this. :|

Will it be likely that freight does get shown again on the website, and why you had to remove them (Poggs).

It's simple Network Rail haven't given explicit permission to show freight, and I don't want to upset them or the industry by showing it. As per http://blog.opentraintimes.com/2012/05/11/more-on-freight-times/#comment-59, NR's situation still isn't clear, so I need to up my game a bit. Sometimes you gotta do long-term strategic things rather than short-term "quick wins" :)

There are plenty of reasons to have this data opened up - enthusiasts are just one - and the last thing I want is for some enterprising young rail enthusiast to go screwing the entire situation up by trying to set up their own site with freight train times for personal glory, rather than furthering Open Rail Data.
 

142094

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Just wondering where the data comes from which tells you what traction a certain working will be formed by?
 

Poggs

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Just wondering where the data comes from which tells you what traction a certain working will be formed by?

It depends. The schedules have the traction class the schedule is timed for, which may bear no relation to the actual traction used on the service. GEMINI, if it's kept up-to-date, will have the unit numbers, and that's on my list of things to look at later.

There are other systems around the industry that may have real-time unit identification, but the association between "train service" and "rolling stock" is loose. The best you can get is the unit number from a CRS setup message, but that's not transmitted to any other systems than the signaller's radio system AIUI.
 

142094

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It depends. The schedules have the traction class the schedule is timed for, which may bear no relation to the actual traction used on the service. GEMINI, if it's kept up-to-date, will have the unit numbers, and that's on my list of things to look at later.

There are other systems around the industry that may have real-time unit identification, but the association between "train service" and "rolling stock" is loose. The best you can get is the unit number from a CRS setup message, but that's not transmitted to any other systems than the signaller's radio system AIUI.

That's what I thought - as you say the next step would be to get the real-time info, which seems to be what most people want when spotting.
 

Poggs

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That's what I thought - as you say the next step would be to get the real-time info, which seems to be what most people want when spotting.

It's coming. TRUST movements, TD berth steps, TSR and VSTP messaging :) What isn't coming is the extra bits that will make rail travel even lovelier, such as unit numbers or, heck, even the number of carriages on a train.

Actively working on it though!
 

142094

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It's coming. TRUST movements, TD berth steps, TSR and VSTP messaging :) What isn't coming is the extra bits that will make rail travel even lovelier, such as unit numbers or, heck, even the number of carriages on a train.

Actively working on it though!

Good to hear - although it can be worrying how hi-tech spotters are becoming - used to be good just to turn up at a station and see what turned up, without knowing it would.
 
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used to be good just to turn up at a station and see what turned up, without knowing it would.

i used to and still do occasionally visit Rugby but you don't see much "rare" workings or trains. and it is a bit far to the station for me :roll:

Would be nice just to know what would be going through, to see if it was worth the visit :D

And thanks Poggs for the link and information :D
 
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D1009

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It's coming. TRUST movements, TD berth steps, TSR and VSTP messaging :) What isn't coming is the extra bits that will make rail travel even lovelier, such as unit numbers or, heck, even the number of carriages on a train.

Actively working on it though!

That worries me slightly, choosing my words carefully certain movements do not appear on Trust/TOPS, but TD berth steps can't be excluded from anything, could that be the problem?
 

GB

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It's coming. TRUST movements, TD berth steps, TSR and VSTP messaging :) What isn't coming is the extra bits that will make rail travel even lovelier, such as unit numbers or, heck, even the number of carriages on a train.

Actively working on it though!

That's the one I'm most looking forward to. Actually seeing where the train is will make things a lot easier when out and about "spotting".
 

The Planner

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That's the one I'm most looking forward to. Actually seeing where the train is will make things a lot easier when out and about "spotting".

Would be a lot of work Id imagine as you would need to know where the berth relates to and then translate that to a map.
 

142094

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i used to and still do occasionally visit Rugby but you don't see much "rare" workings or trains. and it is a bit far to the station for me :roll:

Would be nice just to know what would be going through, to see if it was worth the visit :D

And thanks Poggs for the link and information :D

I can see the information being useful, but think the hobby loses some of its appeal if you know where everything is - becomes a bit of a competition to see everything before someone else does.
 

GB

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While the first link is great, the second is just marvellous! Just what I would be hoping for if this ever comes off. Would not only help with spotting in my free time but would actually help during my job too!

Well done! :)
 

The Planner

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Interested to know how they have got the location of the berths, unless the signalling positions have become open source as well.
 

ralphchadkirk

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Interested to know how they have got the location of the berths, unless the signalling positions have become open source as well.

I imagine that either they have released that information, or that the messages come with some kind of descriptive metadata attached.

Entirely speculation though.
 

Poggs

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I imagine that either they have released that information, or that the messages come with some kind of descriptive metadata attached.

Entirely speculation though.

Neither. It's one hell of a lot of hard work. For the Hatch End - Milton Keynes signalling diagram, I had to use a diagram from the Watford South Junction Accident (1996) report, plus extensive local knowledge of Watford, TRUST reports (they show route number and line/direction), and a handy signalling guide to Kings Langley - Leighton Buzzard.

It took me about two weeks to lay out the berths on that diagram, and they might still be wrong, especially where a signal isn't at a station. TRUST has a timing offset for certain berth steps, so if the signal for, say, Cheddington is 0.5 miles further down the line than the station, when the train leaves Cheddington, it won't report - but when it passes the signal and a berth step message is generated, TRUST then derives the actual departure time from the station based on the train class.

I did similar for the core of the North London Line, being lucky enough to have a PowerPoint version of the Yellow Peril. For the Watford - Euston line, SimSig came in very handy, as did a Bakerloo Line route learning DVD. I can still hear the voices... "When signal Whiskey Sierra 3 4 clears with a shunt indicator, proceed toward the siding at a maximum of 10 miles per hour".

For other parts of the country - especially those areas where there isn't a SimSig data, if anyone can supply me with information about where the signals are, or route learning material, Yellow Perils, etc. - then it'll really help with drawing maps.

Most of it I can derive from TRUST data and TD berth step ordering, but, y'know - easier when you have the raw material.

Incidentally, TRUST will only show reports for trains passing timing points, TD will show every berth step whether or not it's a timing point or not.
 

D1009

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I find this mind boggling, Trust uses offsets to calculate often inaccurate passing/arrival/departure times at stations from track circuit occupation, then this system uses other offsets to convert them back again!
 

The Planner

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Have you had a look at http://www.trackaccess.net/flash/TAS/routeindex/routeindex.htm

Would that be of a benefit ? they do some pretty good stuff, I know you are after open source, but worth a look.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
NIt took me about two weeks to lay out the berths on that diagram, and they might still be wrong, especially where a signal isn't at a station. TRUST has a timing offset for certain berth steps, so if the signal for, say, Cheddington is 0.5 miles further down the line than the station, when the train leaves Cheddington, it won't report - but when it passes the signal and a berth step message is generated, TRUST then derives the actual departure time from the station based on the train class.

That is a massive job in itself and has to be done manually to work out the offsets. Normally just by using stopwatches.
 

Poggs

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Have you had a look at http://www.trackaccess.net/flash/TAS/routeindex/routeindex.htm

Would that be of a benefit ? they do some pretty good stuff, I know you are after open source, but worth a look.

Some of those are out-of-date, but I've used those and lots of other snippets of information, and guesswork etc. to work out where berths are.

That is a massive job in itself and has to be done manually to work out the offsets. Normally just by using stopwatches.

It's possible-ish to work out the offsets TRUST uses, assuming there's a TRUST timestamp on messages accurate to the second, and similar for TD messages. But as you've guessed, yes, it's an absolutely bloody massive job which is why I'm sticking to areas I know at the moment!
 
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