TIMS Readme

The data presented in the following pages was extracted from a report from the Australian National Traffic Information Management System (TIMS).

In early 2006 I was given a rather old copy of an extract of the Australian National TIMS database. The extract had a series of programs that allowed the user to review and update the information. Unfortunately these programs no longer worked with a modern computer system, so I needed to consider some possible solutions that allowed me to easily access the data:

1. I could fix the programs
2. read the raw data directly when I wanted to access any details or
3. convert the data into a more useable format.

I chose the last as being the best long term option to preserve the data so that it could be read more easily in the future. So I wrote a series of programs that converted the original data to series of web pages and indexes.

All the data presented in these pages is as it appears in the original extract except that it has been reformatting so that it actually made sense to a reader not familiar with the internal item codes. Dates have been converted to dd.mm.yyyy format, and special item codes have been expanded into full alphanumeric text. Not all fields made sense to me, but I have done my best to extract all the useful stuff. The indexes were generated automatically from an extensive series of programs that I wrote that parsed the original data extracting any usefull information.

Items of rollingstock have been grouped into pages via type code (Loco, Passenger, Railcar and Wagon) followed by the first three characters of the classification.

The data seems to have been current up to 30^th May 1997.