"The Rail Data Marketplace will deliver a new way of sharing data between consumers – including app developers, tech firms, academia – and the rail industry. New data sharing opportunities will drive innovation, leading to the development of innovative passenger-facing applications, operational efficiencies and improved transparency." 

By adopting an ‘open by default’ approach, the Rail Data Marketplace will remove barriers and make it easeir for partners to work with the railway industry. Better access to quality rail data is seen as a key driver of better customer service and innovation across the industry, and forms one of the key commitments of the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail.

With funding announced in June 2021, the programme of work has begun and is being delivered by the Rail Delivery Group (RDG), and oversight by the Rail Data Council. Representatives from across the sector – including the Department for Transport, Rail Supply Group, RSSB, and Network Rail – have been working in partnership to kickstart the development of the service.

About Rail Data Marketplace

Rail Data Marketplace (RDM) is a central platform for finding and sharing rail data. RDM brings together rail data sources and related services in one place. It offers a simple and open way to share data from across the rail sector and beyond.

The RDM platform will:

• make it easy to search for, access and share rail data
• bring together both freely available and chargeable data
• provide supporting information to help consumers make informed decisions
• support collaboration across a community of data consumers and publishers
• create and manage data sharing agreements, reducing legal costs
• let publishers charge for their data, taking the effort out of billing

Latest updates

We have continued to develop the service and get it into a position where we can make it publicly available.  That time is getting nearer!  We now have 30 organisations registered as users, both publishing and consuming data.  Our ‘private beta’ trial which has been running since January was meant as a time of learning for us, and I am grateful for the patience of our trial users who have helped us to spot areas where we can improve the user experience.  It was probably inevitable that we would also encounter a number of minor technical hitches which comes with trying to publish a variety of data sources but, with our partners, we are working through these. If you are interested in becoming a Publisher or a Consumer on the RDM platform please send us an email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and we will get in touch about the next steps.

As well as usability improvements, we have been developing functionality to publish ‘flat files’ (the likes of .csv files) which are still widely used, and this functionality will be ready to roll out in June. 

We hope that overcoming these technical hitches, along with publishing flat files, will allow a good variety of data products from different publishers to be available when we come to launch RDM including three data sources which aren’t available anywhere else. 

Our thanks to all of those who responded to our survey in the last newsletter about the use of publish / subscribe (event stream) data sources, which was informative as we head into the design phase for functionality which will allow us to publish these types of data.  We are hoping to make these data sources available later in the summer. 

The RDM team have worked hard for months, developing the RDM platform to meet a high and professional standard. The images below are live images from the RDM platform, the first one being the front page of the platform. The second image highlights the organisations on the platform already with some soon to be publishers. The Programme team are still making iterations to the platform and we are excited to show you these changes when available. If you would like to experience the platform please email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and we will get back to you!

The long-term goal of the Rail Data Marketplace Programme is to develop a user-centred, business-to-business digital service that:

1. Provides access to data and real-time rail information, which stimulates innovation and enables the development of customer-focused products and services.
2. Improves data sharing across operational bodies, which leads to efficiency gains across the industry.
3. Improves access to high-quality rail data for public and private bodies which supports growth in rail and cross-modal public transport.
4. Provides a learning platform where users can access a rich source of data about the rail industry.

In realising these objectives, the Rail Data Marketplace will:

• Provide data that is transparent, and presents a ‘single source of truth’, meets a minimum standard of quality, and avoids a high barrier to entry for users.
• Establish community forums for users to raise issues, make suggestions for improvements (to the Rail Data Marketplace and to data itself), and request new datasets.
• Deliver enhancements, new features, services and datasets which responds to user needs.
• Make it easy to explore existing data sources.
• Help organisations to understand the contents of a data source, and provide technical documentation along with it.
• Show users how to connect to data and how to test that connection.
• Have clear terms of use for data sources and make signing up to them quick and easy.

One of the key objectives of the RDM is to bring data publishers and data consumers together on a single strategic platform which makes data searchable, easy to find and ‘friction-free’ to access. Through extensive user research off-the-shelf licenses were perceived as a high-value, key benefit. Feel free to have a look at the different contracts below.

pdf RDM Platform Agreement (Data Consumer) (264 KB)

pdf RDM Platform Agreement (Data Publisher) (275 KB)

pdf Data Sharing Agreement (167 KB)