Delivering rail and reservation information services to nationwide Train Operating Companies (TOCs) in UK

The Rail Delivery Group (RDG), previously the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC), is the British rail industry membership body that brings together passenger and freight rail companies, Network Rail and High Speed 2. The company was set up by the train operators to ensure nationwide services – such as ticket acceptance and rail cards – continued after the privatization of the railways under the Railways Act 1993.

Rail Availability & Reservation Service (RARS), a major IT initiative program which had been envisioned to phase out existing legacy IT services in a gradual manner and provide SaaS based IT services to the nationwide Train Operating Companies (TOCs) with modern IT platform and infrastructure to support and provide better quality of service (QoS) to the end customers.

The program was planned and executed in phase-wise manner.

• Phase 1 of RARS2 was focused on the delivery of a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) replacement of NRS and a migration of all TOCs onto the RARS2 Platform through the utilisation of the RDG RARS Broker.
• Phase 2 focuses on the delivery of new functionality and improved information feeds through the RARS platform. A new reservation interface, live service and operating model were being included as workstreams of the delivery