20.11 Briefing Note

This page details updates to acumen that will be deployed with the 20.11 release.

The relevant User Guide pages will be updated in due course.

Associations and Conflicts

The plan received and presented by acumen is the POINTA CIF.

POINTA (Platform Occupancy INference of Train Associations) is a service which infers associations and enriches the CIF file prior to publication. POINTA is considered to be an enhancement on the association parsing and inference undertaken by WACI (Waterloo Automatic Code Insertion), or similar components common at many locations. (See Data Feeds for more information).

However, particularly at Birmingham New Street and London Euston the development team and end-users have identified illogical associations, and some false conflicts. Support tickets have been raised with RSIT to resolve this at source however in the meantime some enhancements have been made to acumen to address these issues on an interim basis in order to improve the experience for users.

The following sub-sections describe some of the enhancements for 20.11.

Multi-part Associations

Multi-part associations will no longer raise false conflicts.

As an example here, 1A13 and 1A20 both have the same outbound service 9G20.

acumen has recognised these associations (the association lines are drawn) but it has raised a false conflict because both 1A13 and 1A20 are occupying Platform 6.

In the 20.11 upgrade these false conflicts will no longer be seen.

Bay Platforms

This enhancement recognises "top train working" in bay platforms.

As an example, A arrives and departs as B. In the meantime C arrives and departs as D.

Previously an occupation conflict was raised in this scenario but this has now been removed.

Associations between different TOCs

POINTA can incorrectly infer associations between different TOCs. For example at London Euston an Overground service and London Midland service having the same next working.

This enhancement removes this association.

Split Associations

It has been noted that POINTA would provide an association where the applicable services were planned on different platforms; this is due to an issue with POINTA parsing the full CIF and missing logic to take into account any STP/Overlay schedules parsed.

This enhancement removes those associations when the train(s) enter the acumen forecast.

Note: The split association was still display in the Advance Train Plan because this displays the POINTA CIF plan. The association however, will still be listed within the Association Editor dialogue box accessed via the right-click Context Menu - Replan Functionality, and the Live/Expired Associations list within the Train Details View; users are guided to disregard this entry.

Erroneous Associations

During testing, and with thanks to early adopters at Birmingham New Street, it was noted that POINTA had inferred some associations for services where the corresponding activity within the train service schedule did not indicate a related activity.

Where this is the case, the association record provided by POINTA is disregarded at the point of train activation.

Incorrect Main/Secondary association order

Each association record contains a main service and a secondary service. The CIF specification is clear on which service of the pair is designated the main service and which is designated the secondary service.

It has been noted that on some occasions, the main and secondary designations has been reversed by POINTA - the net effect of which is some peculiar rendering of association occupation.

Pending a resolution with POINTA, acumen will better render and represent associations where the main and secondary designations are reversed.

Train Notes

Users can now delete train notes within the Train Details View.

The tool-tip has also been enhanced to show the content of the most recent note.

Applicable to Birmingham New Street ONLY - A&D Book

The train status hover over on the Birmingham New Street platform docker has been enhanced with information from the A&D book.

Included in the hover over is:

• Planned Consist (arr.)
• Planned Consist (dep.)
• Remarks.

The screenshots below demonstrate a before and after for this enhancement.

Applicable to York ONLY - Through Platforms

Trains at York that pass through Platform 3 to call at Platform 4 or vice versa (Scarborough trains), now render on the platform docker across both platforms as shown below.

The through part has the same functionality as the main platform meaning you can left click or right click on the smaller segment to add train notes, amend associations etc. It is also subject to conflict detection e.g. infrastructure restrictions in that through platform, and occupation conflicts with other trains.

Any icons or markers associated with the schedule will appear on the 'main' render on the stopping platform.