Can anyone shed any light on why GBRf headcodes show on RTT?
Frontline GB staff have started using RTT on their mobile devices
(presumably cheaper than paying for Genius mobile licences?!
hock
,
so GB asked NR to stop scrambling their headcodes.
But I think its very unlikely that the far more secretive DB, FL
and (especially) DRS will follow suit, though!
Anyone who is that interested / knowledgeable can work out who is operating a service can very quickly.
I would dispute that.
In many cases, I agree that the destination/origin of freight services
are handily appended with the name of the FOC these days, but that
isn't
always the case, so unless you already know who operates a
particular train/flow, you can't reliably work it out from RTT,
which is the whole point of the anonymisation process:
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/anonymisation/
Also, there are occasions where the locations displayed on RTT can
be misleading, such as Whitemoor yard/VQ, which always shows as
Whitemoor GBRf, even for trains operated by Colas/FHH, because
GB are the operator of the yard.
There are many other, similar examples elsewhere in the country,
so to reliably indentify the operator of all freight services,
including the hundreds of STP/vSTP movements which run
every day, requires a vast amount of additional knowledge
and information
not available in any of the open data feeds.
As long as that remains the case, the FOCs will be happy
that the finer details of their operations remain confidential.
MARK