Freight Loads Book Digitisation

Network Rail maintain the United Kingdom’s railway infrastructure including 20,000 miles of track and 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts. The Loads Book are key documents that outline the maximum tonnages and lengths a freight service can convey across our infrastructure. We have one Loads Book per Region, and they are currently Excel based. Each Region is split junction to junction, and users must piece together national freight journeys. Digitisation is needed to make interpreting this information easier, to ensure less human error and to save the user time. Furthermore, the current Excel format provides minimal governance and control. Users can simply download the document and may not be aware of changes. We will require added layers of governance and control by adding audit trails with commentary fields and fail-safe capabilities for newly added values. Finally, the aim is to produce a standalone map which visualises capability.