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Open Train Times - "Where's all the freight?"

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Poggs

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Lots of people have already contacted me to ask where the non-passenger services have gone from OpenTrainTimes. There are many rumours, the vast majority of which simply aren't true.

There is a debate at the moment over ownership of the schedules - some of it has happened in public, and some of it hasn't. I am not going to comment on any of it other than to say that some valid questions have been raised.

In response to this, I have taken the decision to switch to only displaying trains from the ATOC data feed available from http://data.atoc.org/ until everyone concerned can come up with a way forward.

This also conveniently allows me to work on some of the bigger things I'm planning, such as a map of where trains are, and the real-time side to the website, in preparation for Network Rail's Open Data initiative later in the year.

I realise a lot of people are disappointed, but I hope the majority of you understand the situation.
 
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RailUK Forums

GB

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Can you elaborate anymore on this Network Rail's Open Data initiative?
 

BRX

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Having the freight times on there was great while it lasted... I really hope you can find a way to resolve this and get it back up again.
 

The Planner

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Judging by that document, making the staff version of the LDB open to everyone would pretty much tick the box passenger schedule wise, as it is pretty much a TRUST line up for each schedule anyway.
 

ralphchadkirk

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Judging by that document, making the staff version of the LDB open to everyone would pretty much tick the box passenger schedule wise, as it is pretty much a TRUST line up for each schedule anyway.

No, it says they will be releasing the datasets, which would allow anyone to use them to produce apps/sites or whatever.
 

Ze Random One

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30 Apr 2011
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The main difference is that when the data has been formatted by another application (be that on the www or elsewhere) it takes a lot of effort for a computer to work out what it means - computers deal much better with data which is stored in a 'structured' rather than a 'visual' format - so the official datasets are much better, because you can be certain where everything will be in the file/feed, and you can be sure that you've got every record that you should have, in the right order.
 

the sniper

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That is a shame Poggs, as having the freight paths on your site was brilliant while it lasted!

Hopefully they'll return at some point, sooner rather than later would be nice. :)
 

ex-railwayman

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26 Feb 2012
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Yes absolutely, we do understand Poggs, but, the rail freight fans of this country have now gone into serious withdrawal symptoms, we just can't cope anymore, I hope you get the opportunity to get them back on again, in time for the summer months, so, we can all go out in the sunshine with our cameras.....:D

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.
 

Poggs

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Yes - I'm going to be putting another blog entry up this weekend! Don't worry, I haven't given up.
 
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