I had a need for more data about a train formation a few days ago.
I was a small station whose ticket office was closed with a bicycle and wanted to know where to stand and where board the train so that the bicycle could be loaded efficiently.
As there were no staff around, I used the help point but the person on the other end had such a poor grasp of english they thought I was asking for train times so I had to just guess. Had the data been open, I could have boarded at the right place and not potentially held up the train.
When the data exists to show what way round a formation is on Genius then you would have a point. At this moment in time it only shows the formation of units (eg position 1 / 2 / 3) but does not show which coach of each unit is leading. There has been a work stream by some TOCs to resolve this but it is not yet working so things like 1st class locations are still input manually. The bloke who failed to understand your request would not know the answer to your question unless somebody had typed out a list for him at some stage.
Grid
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Conversely, look at how many people access data on real time bus information in London through independently developed Apps and websites as opposed to through the 'official' TfL website.
TfL have positively encouraged developers to make use of their data; in the long run that has the potential to save them money as they don't need to hire in expensive designers or whatever as someone else is willing to do the work for free! It's also beneficial for customers, or potential customers, who can have the information delivered to them in the format they want. For example, I downloaded about 10 different bus departures Apps before settling on the one which actually works best for me.
Which is absolutely no different what so ever to the data that is released by ATOC, in fact it is even less so, as the live bus times do not use a data base to compare to. There is no feed from the buses as to what vehicle is working what service either.
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NRES has expressed a desire for such information.
What are you burbling on about. NRES have that information from a very large number of sources and often more than one source for each TOC. The fact they do not show it is another issue.
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Must Have Must Have Must Have - Oh and I want if free and I want it now.
We are now living in a society where we are getting to the point that the majority of people are unable to get through the day without their multimedia device being semi permanently attached to their hands, to the point they get knocked over by trams, buses and cars. We have to have the answer to everything immediately and it has to be the answer we want to hear. If it is not the answer we want then you can guarantee that those people will be on faceache or tw@tter to tell everybody about it in the next few seconds.
Yes I am as guilty as everyone else.
I had a little dabble in giving out the gen years ago. Those that know "Tyrell" may or may not remember it's previous guise as a "database" long before the windows version came along. There was a bit of a revelation when mobile phones started to become popular and someone realised you could use the SMS facility to contact people and that, unlike pagers, the message would get to the device when it came out of a tunnel. The pager missed it if it was out of range )and some people know they could use that as an excuse as well!).
I was working for South Easter / Connex at the time (I do not now) and we started testing the SMS facility and during that testing period we set up a group which grew to over one hundred whereby we sent messages to cranks. This was at a time when vice workings on Cross Country or simply a list of 47s was useful. It was allowed by the company and helped serve a purpose proving that the system could cope with multiple messaging. We have moved on in quite spectacular ways from those days. The staff that fed the gen did it for one reason, to get the message out there. People were grateful for it and those that put it out did so because they knew the favour would be reciprocated if need be. There was no need for a signature after each message stating that it was sent by a dongleberry, that it was in full bling or that it was sent by (insert stupid name) wid da gen. Over the years people gave me info, I paid them back, normally with much less knowledge, but I was grateful.
As the internet age came along and yahoo groups became more and more popular I carried on giving out gen to those that wanted it and often did some requests. The scene changed somewhat and much of the stuff I was interested in vanished so I went abroad for a genuine breath of fresh air and went back to not knowing what would be on the front other than a good guess at the class thanks to European Report and it's later yahoo group ERG. I have much to be thankful for and to all the people over the years who have provided me with gen I am massively thankful. I have not ventured as far as some, but with the passing on of diagrams I have leapt halfway up a branch line in deepest Bavaria onto a platform made of a few stones, quite literally in the middle of nowhere, at 22.30 in the knowledge that a train would come the other way soon after with a class 212 and one coach.
And now we are where we are. Da kidzzz want to be the king of Da Gen and will stoop to some pretty low tactics to get the info and set up as many groups as they can to be just a bit better than the other group owner. Get over yourselves lads. Yes I liked to get my gen on the groups quite quickly in the past, but just so others could make genuine use and decide whether to go for something, but now we are at the stage where posting lists of class 60 activity is a competition to see who can get it up first. I know it's useful for fotters, but please.
So what do we actually need to know then?
Train movement data has been in the public domain for quite a few years now. I used the NRES SMS service from a very early stage. If I was doing a blind leap in the middle of nowhere without CIS it was useful to ensure the train coming the other way was running / on time, and on more than occasion I have changed plans when I found a train to be cancelled / late (more mileage!)
Live train times on NRES improved and along with the advent of data feeds to mobile devices web developers have created mobile versions which have gone from being clunky and a bit slow, to actually quite useful. The vast majority of TOC websites have their own feed and their own list of alterations and formation changes. I do not see that this will be developed much more until all the systems talk to each other better and then you MIGHT see things like formations in a better way. But the industry has not got this right yet, so everyone else needs to calm down a bit and await developments that I am sure wont be too far away.
One thing I have found pleasing about the use of data is that ATOC/NR have added the caveat that it cannot be sold. Just imagine if they sold it to the highest bidder. Traintimes.com could charge the punters (and you) an obscene amount of money for the gen. Imagine the length of this thread then !
So why is da gen being withheld then? As an end user of most systems referred to in this thread, and more besides I can assure you that there is a lot more to Genius / Gemini / TRUST / CIS / CCF etc. than simply providing train running data. That is the system at its most simplistic level. The industry uses these as tools for gauging its performance, recording its performance and has other layers such as delay attribution (£££s and sensitive in the extreme) maintenance histories, crew workings and in the case of CIS software and third party train running information. What is happening is that the various systems are starting to talk to each other through Darwin which will help with information flow at station and web levels (including the open data feeds we are seeing).
And so we reach the bit about sticking train numbers for all to see on the net. I actually do not have a major issue with it actually. I suspect one day it might happen. What will NOT happen is TOCs spending any money on the development of a system for spotters. It might be a bi product of something else. I have already posted elsewhere that Genius cannot tell what way round a train is as yet, other than the order that the bloke in the sidings reported a string of units. I suspect this is being worked on! People have mentioned toilet provision etc. A number of TOCs already share this information, when known, via CIS and other systems but these are manual inputs and staff who do those inputs have to be told. There is no system yet that is able to tell that someone has done a Mr whippy in the wash basin instead of the loo and thus the 10.15 from Gibblesville to Snodgrass will not have a loo on it. Doubtless a web developer will think of a way over the coming years to do so. Nothing is impossible. We have come a very long way in a very short space of time and most of what is in the public domain is as a result of other systems being used as a bi product of a system elsewhere. Performance regimes exist for companies which are measured against providing certain unit formations for peak workings and if these are in the public domain there is a risk that they could be used against a company, but then someone commuting on a train everyday knows that anyway.
What spotters / unit bashers will have to have rammed down their throats is that, if ever this information does get put on the net, it cannot be relied upon to be accurate at any time. Most control offices in the country have staff doing set swaps, exam swaps, cancellations etc all the time and in big disruptive events the gen will be next to useless, sometimes into the next day. The problem is that with everybody sitting with their permanently attached media device there will be people queuing up to criticise one unit being mis-diagrammed and then will wonder why it is taken off line.
Grid
. Pray tell how you came to that conclusion?
. You need help.
In seriousness though, learning to integrate with poorly-documented legacy systems is surely a skill worth learning.
