How does data get to small railway stations for departure boards?

[Trains1]

Hello

Does anyone on here know how the data for a small train stations run by Northern departure boards get there like over the Internet or is there a separate network for these it looks like thay connect back to the box that the ticket machine connects to

Thanks

 

[Bletchleyite]

Over the Internet, likely via a SIM card.

The display on Northern's TVMs and information screens (rather than the LED ones) is just a web page eg:

Web CIS

Change the 3 letter code to the Northern operated station of your choice.

 

[Adam Williams]

likely via a SIM card

I had heard that particularly rural stations are sometimes well-placed to make use of RFC 1149 where connectivity is otherwise a challenge, though I understand the latency isn't great.

 

[Mcq]

Over the Internet, likely via a SIM card.

The display on Northern's TVMs and information screens (rather than the LED ones) is just a web page eg:

Web CIS

Change the 3 letter code to the Northern operated station of your choice.

Is there a similar Webcis for north london stations - e.g. Winchmore Hill (WIH) please?

 

[MrJeeves]

I had heard that particularly rural stations are sometimes well-placed to make use of RFC 1149 where connectivity is otherwise a challenge, though I understand the latency isn't great.

Explains all the Darwin "no reports".

 

[Halish Railway]

Explains all the Darwin "no reports".

I’d have thought that’d be more to do with the signalling design, rather than mobile/internet reception, particularly for stations that are in the middle of long block sections where there aren’t any track sensors.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Is there a similar Webcis for north london stations - e.g. Winchmore Hill (WIH) please?

Worldline Tiger appears to work for there:

https://tiger.worldline.global/home

 

[Nottingham59]

There's a national data feed from Network Rail that anyone can subscribe to over the interweb. My teenage son has live departures from Nottingham Station continuously scrolling on a mini-LCD display hooked up to a Raspberry Pi.

EDIT: This is the link he used. Don't ask me for the details as I have no idea how it works

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/real-time-train-station-arrival-board/

Also:

https://www.raspberrypi.com/tutorials/train-timetable-raspberry-pi-tutorial/

 

[Geoff_K]

Worldline Tiger appears to work for there:

https://tiger.worldline.global/home

I wonder why Crayford (CRY) is missing from the list of stations you can click on?

 

[Mcq]

Thanks Bletchleyite

 

[pokemonsuper9]

Over the Internet, likely via a SIM card.

The display on Northern's TVMs and information screens (rather than the LED ones) is just a web page eg:

Web CIS
Change the 3 letter code to the Northern operated station of your choice.

That explains where the UI for the TVMs comes from, it's literally just that page!
I thought it was just something the TVM maker had designed.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I wonder why Crayford (CRY) is missing from the list of stations you can click on?

Tiger only includes stations that have a Worldline CIS setup.

 

[stadler]

Tiger only includes stations that have a Worldline CIS setup.

Crayford does have a Worldline CIS and has done for twelve years. For some odd reason most Southeastern stations are missing from the Tiger website. It is supposed to include all stations with a Worldline CIS but yet the majority of the Southeastern stations are missing. It must be an error and perhaps Worldline forgot to add them.

 

[buz33]

I had heard that particularly rural stations are sometimes well-placed to make use of RFC 1149 where connectivity is otherwise a challenge, though I understand the latency isn't great.

Explains all the Darwin "no reports".

I’d have thought that’d be more to do with the signalling design, rather than mobile/internet reception, particularly for stations that are in the middle of long block sections where there aren’t any track sensors.

I don't think that was a serious suggestion that RFC 1149 is used for internet connectivity.

IP over Avian Carriers - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Geoff_K]

Thanks for the info.

 

[rf_ioliver]

I had heard that particularly rural stations are sometimes well-placed to make use of RFC 1149 where connectivity is otherwise a challenge, though I understand the latency isn't great.

Bandwidth is pretty good....do you know how many SD cards you store in a coconut?

 

[Trains1]

There's a national data feed from Network Rail that anyone can subscribe to over the interweb. My teenage son has live departures from Nottingham Station continuously scrolling on a mini-LCD display hooked up to a Raspberry Pi.

EDIT: This is the link he used. Don't ask me for the details as I have no idea how it works

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/real-time-train-station-arrival-board/

Also:

https://www.raspberrypi.com/tutorials/train-timetable-raspberry-pi-tutorial/

I'm building one of those at the moment

 

[Frontera2]

Crayford does have a Worldline CIS and has done for twelve years. For some odd reason most Southeastern stations are missing from the Tiger website. It is supposed to include all stations with a Worldline CIS but yet the majority of the Southeastern stations are missing. It must be an error and perhaps Worldline forgot to add them.

Not an error… there’s a cost element to providing TIGER feeds for more stations.

 

[stadler]

Not an error… there’s a cost element to providing TIGER feeds for more stations.

I am surprised that a state owned railway company as large as Southeastern can not afford that. At neighbouring GTR they have 100% of stations on Tiger despite having double the amount of stations. It is probably just someone at Southeastern management trying to cut costs by limiting Tiger to only a few stations.

I will say that Southeastern seems to spend a lot less money on their CIS compared to other TOCs. For example Southeastern still have 45 smaller stations (eg, Crowhurst, Folkestone West, Martin Mill, Stonegate, etc) that use basic Text To Speech (Acapela Rachel) announcements from the Infotec boards rather than proper Anne and Rob announcements. Meanwhile at neighbouring GTR they have proper Anne and Matt announcements at 100% of stations. Even tiny little Doleham has Anne announcements now.

It would be good if the ongoing nationalisation of all our TOCs brings some standardisation and brings all TOCs up to the same level. Hopefully all stations will be on Tiger then. Or maybe even a new replacement for Tiger will be developed by then.

 

[rf_ioliver]

I had heard that particularly rural stations are sometimes well-placed to make use of RFC 1149 where connectivity is otherwise a challenge, though I understand the latency isn't great.

And in many places they put lines up above the tracks so that the Layer 1s can take a rest.

RFC 1149 works best with UDP

 

[JBuchananGB]

I have a Raspberry Pi displaying the CIS from National Rail

https://realtime.nationalrail.co.uk/ldbcis/departures.aspx?u=039B1CD1-14D4-4CB9-83B1-A84CC3AEDF83&crs=sra

 

[Frontera2]

I am surprised that a state owned railway company as large as Southeastern can not afford that. At neighbouring GTR they have 100% of stations on Tiger despite having double the amount of stations. It is probably just someone at Southeastern management trying to cut costs by limiting Tiger to only a few stations.

I will say that Southeastern seems to spend a lot less money on their CIS compared to other TOCs. For example Southeastern still have 45 smaller stations (eg, Crowhurst, Folkestone West, Martin Mill, Stonegate, etc) that use basic Text To Speech (Acapela Rachel) announcements from the Infotec boards rather than proper Anne and Rob announcements. Meanwhile at neighbouring GTR they have proper Anne and Matt announcements at 100% of stations. Even tiny little Doleham has Anne announcements now.

It would be good if the ongoing nationalisation of all our TOCs brings some standardisation and brings all TOCs up to the same level. Hopefully all stations will be on Tiger then. Or maybe even a new replacement for Tiger will be developed by then.

The majority of SE stations have now been added to TIGER, those outstanding will be added within the next week or so. This post helped get things moving

 

[tom1649]

I'm surprised by how few EMR stations are on TIGER. Even Derby is missing and I'm sure they use Worldline there.

 

[Mattplans]

Crayford does have a Worldline CIS and has done for twelve years. For some odd reason most Southeastern stations are missing from the Tiger website. It is supposed to include all stations with a Worldline CIS but yet the majority of the Southeastern stations are missing. It must be an error and perhaps Worldline forgot to add them.

I wonder why Crayford (CRY) is missing from the list of stations you can click on?

The passenger information manager on Twitter mentioned that it comes with an additional cost to add every station to the website (this had honestly not occured to me previously). I saw that comment a while ago - probably over 10 months ago. You might be aware that since then, however, every Southeastern-managed station is now available.

https://tiger.worldline.global/toc/SE

And I imagine every station they call at not managed by them is also on there as well.
Edit: oops, I missed posts #18,19,22 above.

 

[DaveTM]

Bandwidth is pretty good....do you know how many SD cards you store in a coconut?

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 full of CDROMs!

 

[rf_ioliver]

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 full of CDROMs!

Done this with a DHL truck with boxes of DAT tapes and driven across the US to long-term secure storage....alas I only organised this and didn't do the road-trip personally; that would have been fun!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Mar 2026 ==

Over the Internet, likely via a SIM card.

Via the 3/4/5G modem to be strict ... the SIM card just provides the IMSI and keys and doesn't contain any antenna/communications equipment

There's still a few purely analog radio based systems around too, but most of the stuff I've dealt with has been 4/5G based (some with eSIM).

 

[bleeder4]

Back before the Internet it was all radio based wasn't it? My local station had CRT screens in the 80s which I assumed were updated via a radio transmission. One could argue that there was no need to change it to using the Internet really, as the old system did the job.

 

[plugwash]

Electronics that runs 24/7 outdoors has a tendancy to develop failures. You can repair it to a point, but eventually your stock of spare parts starts to dwindle, you go to find more but you find the exact replacements are no longer available from legtimate suppliers. You may find substitutes but then as you are doing so, you look at large power-hungry CRTs, and then you look at much lighter LED matrixes and LCD panels. You look at the BBC micro era computer hardware and then you look at a modern embedded board. You look at your custom radio system that requires custom spectrum licenses and transmitter infrastructure and then you look at an off the shelf cellular modem that just requires a small payment to a telco to bring your data from anywhere in the world.

Add to that, the modern railway is fragmented and hooked on subcontracting. A new subcontractor doesn't have any legacy radio infrastructure, but they can buy cellular modems and service just as easily as the incumbent can.

 

[Recessio]

Back before the Internet it was all radio based wasn't it? My local station had CRT screens in the 80s which I assumed were updated via a radio transmission. One could argue that there was no need to change it to using the Internet really, as the old system did the job.

I don't know how the radio infrastructure worked, but one advantage of an internet system is that it's very easy to do in-place software updates to completely change anything on the system (especially if it's essentially just a TV showing a maximised web browser window, then the webpage can be updated to have anything you want). I don't know if the CRT system necessarily had that level of flexibilty - i.e. if it received a full TV picture over the air, or just the information that was rendered locally on some form of microcomputer.

 

[najaB]

This kind of application is exactly what protocols like LoRa are designed for. Low data rates, wide reach, and very low power requirements.