Glossary

Terms are listed in the order in which they appear in published reports. Where a term has a specific technical definition that differs from its everyday meaning, the technical definition governs.

A2F (Arrived to Final) — the primary freight punctuality measure used throughout this archive. A service is A2F on time if it arrives at its final booked destination within 15 minutes of the planned arrival time. The denominator is all post-activation TRUST services with a resolved CIF schedule. Pre-activation cancellations and schedule-lookup failures are excluded. See data window for the full population definition.

FCaL benchmark — the national freight Cancellations and Lateness figure, typically cited as “>90% A2F” in industry reporting. This is the sector-wide punctuality figure published by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) for all GB freight operators across all routes. Corridor-level A2F figures in this archive are compared against the national FCaL benchmark as the primary external reference point.

FCaL — Freight Cancellations and Lateness, the all-FOC, all-route freight punctuality figure published by the Office of Rail and Road. Counts NR-caused events only, in contrast to A2F which is all-cause. National FCaL is typically cited at >90% as the benchmark against which Gauge Intelligence corridor figures are compared. See also FCaL benchmark.

TRUST — Train Running System Unified Timetable. Network Rail’s real-time train movement tracking system, which generates a structured event stream for each signalled train. TRUST messages used in this archive: 0001 (activation), 0002 (cancellation), 0003 (movement). The TRUST stream is accessed via NROD.

NROD — Network Rail Open Data. The publicly available real-time data feed that carries TRUST movement messages. Gauge Intelligence subscribes to the national TRUST feed (all operators, all routes) via the NROD STOMP interface.

CIF — Common Interface File. The timetable file format used to distribute planned working timetable schedules. Each CIF schedule contains a train_uid, STP indicator, schedule start/end dates, and a sequence of timing points. CIF schedules are the planned benchmark against which TRUST actuals are measured.

BPLAN — Block Plan. Network Rail’s geography reference data, distributed via the Rail Data Marketplace. BPLAN maps location codes (STANOX, TIPLOC) to named locations and provides the route graph used for corridor assignment. Gauge Intelligence uses the current-period BPLAN product from Peter Hicks’s weekly RDM release.

STANOX — STAtion Number. Network Rail’s numeric location identifier, used in TRUST messages. Each physical location has a unique STANOX. STANOX area codes (the first two digits) are used to group locations geographically.

TIPLOC — Timing Point Location Code. A six-character alphanumeric code identifying a specific timing point in the working timetable. TIPLOCs are used in CIF schedules; they map to STANOX codes via BPLAN.

FOC — Freight Operating Company. A licensed operator running freight services on the National Rail network. FOCs are identified in TRUST messages by their toc_id field (two-digit numeric code). All operators in this archive are FOCs.

TOC — Train Operating Company. A licensed operator running passenger services. TOCs are referenced in this archive only for context (e.g., the national FCaL benchmark includes both FOC and TOC-adjacent freight activity).

Schedule 8 — the contractual mechanism under which Network Rail (NR) and freight operators (FOCs) make payments to each other when NR-attributed delay causes a deviation from the benchmark performance. The CP7 NR-to-FOC rate used in this archive is £28.42 per minute (2025-26 CPI-indexed from the £25.81 2022-23 base). The FOC-to-NR rate is £57.24 per minute (2025-26 CPI-indexed from the £51.98 base). See CPI indexation methodology for derivation and data window for counterfactual structure.

S8 — shorthand for Schedule 8 of the Track Access Contract. See Schedule 8 for the full definition.

CP7 — Control Period 7, the regulatory funding and access agreement period running from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2029. Schedule 8 rates are set per control period.

Railway period (Period 1–Period 13) — the National Rail timetable year is divided into 13 railway periods of roughly four weeks each. Period boundaries are set by Network Rail. Period 13 is the final period of the railway year. This archive uses the period nomenclature (e.g., “Period 12–Period 13 2025-26”) to describe the time window covered by each report.

STP indicator — Short-Term Planning indicator, a single character that classifies a CIF schedule’s priority: C (cancellation) > O (overlay) > N (new STP) > P (permanent). When multiple schedules share the same train_uid and date, the highest-priority STP wins. This is the STP priority chain.

Headcode — a four-character alphanumeric code (e.g., 4M88) that informally identifies a train service in operations. The first character indicates service type (4 = intermodal, 6 = bulk, etc.). Headcode obfuscation was removed by Network Rail in March 2023; headcodes now appear in TRUST messages unmodified.

CoI chain — chain of identity. When a train changes identity mid-journey (e.g., at a yard or terminal), the new activation is linked to the originating activation via the original_train_id field in the TRUST 0001 message. CoI tracking ensures that delay accumulated across identity changes is attributed to the same journey.

possession — a planned closure or restriction of a section of railway track to allow infrastructure work. Possessions can divert, delay, or cancel freight services and are a major source of NR-attributed delay. Most possessions are scheduled in advance via the Engineering Access Statement; emergency possessions are unscheduled.

Corridor-attributed figures — performance for services traversing a defined geographic corridor, attributed by NROD routing. Corridor-attributed figures are comparable to NR route performance reports.

Operator-attributed figures — performance for all services operated by a given FOC nationally, across all corridors. Operator-attributed figures are comparable to ORR FOC performance statistics.

Trailing baseline — the rolling 12-week A2F mean and standard deviation for an operator or service group, computed from the 12 weeks immediately preceding the reporting period. Used to contextualise the latest period figure and flag deviations beyond one standard deviation.

12-week baseline — shorthand for the trailing 12-week mean. Displayed in operator reference pages as “12-week baseline: X% ± Ypp” where pp means percentage points.

A2F denominator — the count of services included in the punctuality calculation. Only post-activation services with a resolved CIF schedule are counted. Cancelled-after-activation services appear in the cancellation rate but are excluded from the A2F denominator.

Bradford Hill — a set of nine criteria proposed by epidemiologist Sir Austin Bradford Hill (1965) for evaluating whether an observed association between two phenomena is causal. Gauge Intelligence applies the criteria as a prerequisite for any causal claim in editorial output. See /methodology/causation/ for the full checklist.

Terms not defined here that appear in NR documentation: consult the Network Rail open data glossary at openraildata.com, which is the primary reference for TRUST message field definitions.