Online Journey Planner

About Online Journey Planner

The Online Journey Planner (OJP) is the engine used by National Rail to plan routes, calculate fares and establish ticket availability. 

OJP derives routeing information from SilverRail’s journey planning engine known as IPTIS (Integrated Passenger Transport Information System) and ticket availability from the National Reservation Service (NRS). It also accesses real-time information directly from Darwin, meaning all journey plans take account of delays, schedule changes and last minute cancellations made by the train companies.

Online Journey Planner data feeds

There are 3 primary data feeds derived from the OJP engine:

• the Real Time Journey Planner (RTJP) Webservice

• the Disruptions Webservice

• the What can I do with my ticket Webservice

all of which are SOAP API feeds. 

The Data Feed Request Form will show you which feeds are currently available to you. If a specific feed isn’t visible on the form, it’s likely available via the Rail Data Marketplace instead.

OJP terms of access

OJP data feeds are made available under formal licence, requiring signature by both parties. To request a licence, please complete Data Feed Form Request Form.

When licensing the RTJP Webservice to third parties we are obliged to include a licence condition stating that the RTJP Webservice must not be used in conjunction with ticket retailing capability on websites. This condition is imposed by SilverRail rather than NRE.

OJP usage charges

The RTJP Webservice is charged at cost recovery rates whereas the Disruptions Webservice is provided completely free to all users, meaning National Rail do not generate any revenue from the provision and set-up of these feeds. As such, only minimal resource is available to carry out the set-up of these feeds. 

To enable us to continue providing this service to everyone, set-up requests are submitted to our supplier in bulk on the first and third Thursday of every railway period (every 4 weeks beginning the first Sunday in April each year). Rather than handling each request separately, on a resource heavy ad-hoc basis, we accumulate requests and arrange the set-up of multiple web services in one go. 

Please be aware, this may lead to longer set-up wait times for some people than others.

Technical support

As this is a non-commercial service, no formal user support is provided. However, unofficial technical support can be found via the Open Rail Data user forum Open Rail Data-Talk

Improvements for developers

We are always aiming to improve things for developers so we hold biannual developer engagement days to give developers the opportunity to make requests, offer suggestions, get technical advice and give us some much valued feedback. If you are a user of our data feeds we will contact you directly by email to invite you along.