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Update 1528 21 October 2026	New Features, Improvements and a New Chapter Hello everyone, This is my first System Update since becoming Managing Director of HOPS, having taken over from Danny at the end of September. For those who don't already know me, I'm Alex Seal. I've been involved in heritage railways since I was sixteen, spent twenty years as a Network Rail signaller and subsequently worked in heritage railway management. I've also been a HOPS user and volunteer for around fifteen years, so while my role is new, HOPS and the world it serves certainly aren't new to me. What began as a solution to a rostering problem has grown, under Danny's leadership, into a platform supporting heritage organisations across the UK, Australia, South Africa and beyond. That's a remarkable achievement, and I'd like to thank him for everything he's built and for his support during the handover. I'm enormously excited about what comes next. There's already a great deal of functionality in HOPS that we could be making better use of, and plenty of good ideas waiting to be developed. I want us to deliver more, communicate better and, above all, help the organisations using HOPS make the most of their limited time and resources. With that in mind, here's a look at some of the improvements we've delivered recently. IN THIS UPDATE - New HOPS Service Status page - Raildays: digital membership cards and improved ID cards - Membership Management - Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) - Department Staff Lists: emergency contacts - Asset Management improvements - User account permissions - Clearer expiry notification emails - Did you know? Managing your locations --- NEW HOPS SERVICE STATUS PAGE I'm sorry for the disruption to HOPS services on 20 October. We know how much organisations rely on HOPS, often at short notice and on operating days, and we're reviewing what happened so we can reduce the chance of it happening again. One immediate change is a new public Service Status page, making it easier to check the availability of HOPS services and stay informed during any disruption. UK: https://status.hops.org.uk Australia: https://status.hops.org.au The dashboard uses information from our monitoring systems to show the current status of HOPS services automatically. We'll also use it to publish updates during incidents, giving you a single place to find out what's happening and when services have been restored. Links have been added to the HOPS homepage and Helpdesk, but please bookmark the appropriate address so you can reach it directly if HOPS itself is unavailable. --- RAILDAYS - DIGITAL MEMBERSHIP CARDS AND IMPROVED ID CARDS Raildays now supports digital membership cards alongside existing HOPS ID Cards, all accessible through the newly renamed My Cards section of the Raildays app. Digital membership cards show the issuing organisation, membership type, membership dates and a QR code for verification. When the North Norfolk Railway asked for HOPS User Numbers to be shown on digital ID cards, we took the opportunity to review the overall card layout. As well as adding User Numbers, we've improved the presentation of photographs, Authority to Work information and expiry dates. The result is clearer, easier-to-use digital cards, and the addition of membership cards makes Raildays useful to members as well as staff. --- MEMBERSHIP MANAGEMENT - MORE THAN JUST A DATABASE It's encouraging to see more clients adopting HOPS Membership as their central source of membership information, and this is an area we're keen to keep developing. Many heritage organisations have traditionally kept membership records in spreadsheets, often maintained by one or two dedicated volunteers. That can work, but it brings risks: information goes out of date, several versions of the same records circulate, access is hard to control, and the organisation becomes dependent on one person. HOPS Membership holds records centrally, with access controlled through permissions. It supports online renewals, reducing work for membership teams while making renewal easier for members, and we can produce physical membership cards as well as the new digital cards in Raildays. We've also fixed an issue with the Mark as Lost and Re-issue function. Replacement membership cards now keep their membership details and expiry dates and can be processed correctly. If your organisation still manages memberships through spreadsheets or another system, we'd be happy to talk through your requirements, how we could transfer your existing records and how HOPS Membership could reduce your administrative workload. --- MULTI-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION (MFA) Security remains a priority, especially as more organisations rely on HOPS to manage sensitive information. The Current User Accounts report now includes an MFA Enabled column, so administrators can see which users have enrolled in Multi-Factor Authentication. The column is also included in the CSV export, making it easy to review MFA adoption across your organisation. We're also considering whether MFA should become mandatory for further permissions, notably those involving sensitive personal information such as medical records or customer details. We'll publish details well in advance of introducing any new requirements. In the meantime, you can already require MFA for any group of users by assigning Permission 545 - REQUIRE Multifactor Authentication (MFA) to the relevant permission groups. We recommend doing this for anyone with access to sensitive information or important administrative functions. More information about MFA is available at: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/mfa --- DEPARTMENT STAFF LISTS - EMERGENCY CONTACTS At the request of the Mid-Hants Railway, we've added two new tabs to Department Staff Lists to help departments manage emergency contact information. The Emergency Contacts tab lets authorised users view emergency contact details for staff in their department, including names, relationships, addresses and telephone numbers. The No Emergency Contacts tab lists staff who haven't provided any emergency contact details, so missing information can be followed up. Both tabs require Permission 141 for the relevant department, so department managers can see what they need without having access to emergency contact details for the whole organisation. As these tabs show personal details of people outside your organisation, we'd strongly suggest also requiring MFA (Permission 545) for anyone holding Permission 141. Now is a good time for departments to review their emergency contact information and chase up anyone who hasn't provided it. --- ASSET MANAGEMENT IMPROVEMENTS We've made several improvements to Asset Management in response to feedback from clients in both the UK and Australia. ASSET NAMES Victorian Goldfields Railway, North Norfolk Railway, South Devon Railway, Daylesford Railway and Transport Heritage NSW all reported problems with the automatic conversion of Asset Names to title case, which we've now removed. HOPS used to change the capitalisation of Asset Names automatically, which caused problems with abbreviations and technical identifiers. For example, "GWR" became "Gwr" and "23AW" became "23Aw", sometimes simply by editing and saving an existing asset. Asset Names are now saved exactly as entered. Names that were altered in the past haven't been changed back automatically, but you can correct them manually where necessary. NEW FIELDS FOR CELLULAR DEVICES The Great Central Railway asked for a way to record details of connected equipment, so we've added two optional fields to the Asset Register: SIM Number (ICCID) and IMEI Number. These can be used for mobile phones, GPS trackers and other equipment with cellular connectivity. The fields can be enabled for individual Asset Types under Asset Management > AM System Settings > Asset Types > Edit, and shown on the Asset Register using the existing Show on Index option. SUPPORT FOR TIFF FILES At the request of Didcot Railway Centre, Asset Management now accepts TIFF image files (.tif and .tiff) in an asset's Files section. This is ideal for high-resolution scans of historic engineering drawings, plans and other archival documents. DUPLICATE DEFECT RECORDS The South Devon Railway and Dartmouth Steam Railway & River Boat Company both reported that clicking Save more than once could create duplicate defect records. We've fixed this, and the New Defect form now prevents repeated submissions while a record is being saved. If you've seen similar behaviour elsewhere in HOPS, please raise a support ticket so we can investigate. --- USER ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT - IMPROVED PERMISSIONS Previously, users with Permission 478 - ARCHIVE User Accounts also needed Permission 066 - ADD User Accounts before they could archive an account. Following a request from the Great Central Railway, these permissions now work independently. This means you can give staff responsibility for archiving accounts without also allowing them to create new ones. It's useful where one department handles onboarding new staff, and another manages accounts when people leave. It's a small change, but an important one in letting organisations control access according to individual responsibilities. --- CLEARER EXPIRY NOTIFICATION EMAILS Prompted by feedback from the West Somerset Railway, we've improved the wording of expiry notification emails covering Role Appointments, Competence Elements and Competence Element Awards. These emails could be confusing when there was nothing to report, with recipients simply seeing "(None)" beneath each category. They now explain their purpose more clearly and confirm when there are no expired or soon-to-expire records for the periods covered. --- DID YOU KNOW? MANAGING YOUR LOCATIONS HOPS administrators can view and edit their organisation's locations under: System > HOPS Config Details > Locations New locations need to be added by the HOPS team, but you can edit existing ones yourself, including their short names, addresses and where they appear in HOPS. We've also improved the way location mileages are displayed, using the conventional miles and chains format (for example, 5m 04c). Accurate location details matter most where they're used by other HOPS services, including Raildays. If you need additional locations added, please raise a support ticket, and we'll be happy to help. --- KEEP THE IDEAS COMING I hope this update shows just how many improvements start with suggestions from clients. Whether it's a new feature, a change to an existing process or a small but irritating problem, feedback from one organisation often leads to improvements that benefit many others. That's one of the real strengths of HOPS. We support a wide variety of organisations, each with different needs, resources and ways of working. Sharing that experience helps us develop solutions that are useful across the wider heritage sector, not just to the organisation that first asked for them. There's a lot of work ahead, and we won't be able to do everything at once. But I want us to keep listening, make sensible improvements and help you get more from the systems you already use. If there's something you'd like us to look at, or an area of HOPS you're not using yet but would like to explore, please raise a ticket through the HOPS Helpdesk, and we'll get back to you. https://www.hops.org.uk/helpdesk.php Thank you for your continued support. Alex Seal
Update 1526 5 October 2026	A final HOPS update from Danny Hello everyone, Here is a final HOPS update from me. The week before last the new HOPS directors (Graham, David, Ernest, Rob, Alex and me) met for the first time and started to get to grips with the key details of behind-the-scenes of HOPS. I can report that, from this meeting, Alex was elected as a director, and Graham was elected the chair. Alex started officially working for the company as an employee on Monday just gone. He has of course been closely-involved in HOPS as a volunteer almost since the very beginning, and has been gradually ramping-up managerial involvement over the last month, up to a point where, by last Friday, I have completely handed-over day-to-day management of HOPS to Alex. Alex will now be the key senior point of contact for HOPS matters instead of me. All other staff are still in place, eg Alan for accounts and Steve for Retail Systems, so please continue to use those contacts where you would have done previously. Here is a link to view the full HOPS team if you wish to: https://www.hops.org.uk/about_team.php Thank you to everyone who has given feedback and helped steer the recent succession planning work. One concern that was raised that I think is appropriate to address relates to confidentiality. Several of the new HOPS directors are managers of their own railways, and there was some concern about other railways' commercially-sensitive data that is stored in HOPS. To address this we have made it policy that directors without management roles don't have access to other railways' data in HOPS. The only directors that have access are Alex and me (Danny), which is the same as it has been for a long time. It is already clearly understood by all directors that we are here to represent the best interest of HOPS and its customers, rather than to be representatives of our own railways. All of us are committed to ensuring HOPS provides long-term benefit to the sectors and communities it serves through the provision and development of HOPS services. We hope this gives some reassurance. I am glad that a new management team is now in place, and I am buoyed that already lots of new things are being keenly discussed or pursued, both in terms of program development and wider business development. I have confidence I can look forward to seeing HOPS making adventurous new developments in the future! I am still involved in HOPS in a few small ways, eg I am still a director for the moment, to assist with continuity over the coming months, and I will still take part in some bits of development, especially on parts of the system that were originally built by me and on the upcoming transition of document repositories to New HOPS format. I'll also make myself available for any advice required about previous developments or decision rationale. I would like to thank everyone involved in HOPS, both in the past and those who are taking it forward for the future. It has been a pleasure working with the HOPS team, and with the HOPS admins and other managers at all our railways, tramways, museums and other centres. When I started building HOPS 17 years ago I would never have predicted that we would be where we are now! I hope HOPS and I have served you well, and I look forward to seeing HOPS continue to grow and support everyone to make further and better use of the system and all its developments in the future. If you have any questions about any of the above please contact Alex or me or any of the new directors and we will be happy to help. Thank you very much again Danny Scroggins
Update 1523 5 October 2026	File Uploads on Apple Devices We are aware of an issue affecting some users uploading images and files to HOPS from iPhones and iPads. We have investigated this and identified the cause as a bug in WebKit, the browser technology used by browsers on iOS and iPadOS. In affected circumstances, the browser attempts to upload a file but sends the request without the file data, causing the upload to fail. This is not specific to a particular image or file type and may affect various file upload facilities within HOPS. The issue has been reported to WebKit and a fix is currently being worked on. Unfortunately, the underlying problem is outside HOPS and will ultimately need to be resolved through an update to WebKit/iOS. We have added a warning to affected file upload facilities in HOPS. In the meantime, if you encounter this problem, using a private/incognito browser tab may allow the upload to work. Alternatively, please use a non-affected device to complete the upload. We will continue to monitor the WebKit issue and will remove the warning in HOPS when the problem has been resolved.
Update 1520 2 October 2026	HOPS Identity Platform (IdP) We're introducing a HOPS Identity Platform to provide a central authentication service for HOPS and its connected applications. Applications such as Time Register, Point of Sale, Raildays and Online Public Sales have previously needed to handle elements of authentication themselves. The Identity Platform brings this together through a central HOPS service, making authentication more consistent for users and easier to develop across the HOPS platform. The first applications to move across will be Online Public Sales websites, followed by other HOPS applications. OAUTH 2.0 AND OPENID CONNECT The Identity Platform uses OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect (OIDC), widely adopted industry standards for authorisation and authentication used by services including Microsoft and Google. HOPS itself will act as the Identity Provider (IdP). This does not mean that users will be able to sign in to HOPS using an external account such as Microsoft, Google or Facebook. A HOPS account belongs to the individual and may provide access to several different organisations. Keeping authentication within HOPS means that access to those organisations does not depend on the security or administration of an external account. More information about the standards is available from Microsoft: OAuth 2.0 https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/security/business/security-101/what-is-oauth OpenID Connect (OIDC) https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/security/business/security-101/what-is-openid-connect-oidc WHY ARE WE MAKING THIS CHANGE? HOPS is increasingly a platform of connected applications rather than a single system. A central identity service means authentication and security improvements can increasingly be implemented once across the HOPS platform, rather than separately for each application. For example, when we introduced multi-factor authentication (MFA) in 2025, individual applications needed to be modified to support it. The Identity Platform provides a better foundation for improvements of this kind in future. WHAT WILL USERS NOTICE? For most users, very little will change. Your existing HOPS username, password and, where applicable, TOTP verification code will continue to work, and you won't need to create a new account or change your login details. There is also no change to how organisations manage users or their access within HOPS. As applications move across, you'll increasingly see the same HOPS login process when accessing different HOPS services. WHAT DOES THIS ENABLE? The Identity Platform gives us a foundation for further improvements, including support for passkeys. It also creates the opportunity for HOPS to provide authentication for compatible systems outside HOPS. An organisation could, for example, allow its users to access an intranet, CCTV system, WiFi captive portal or another application using their HOPS account. Where supported, Single Sign-On (SSO) could allow someone already signed in to HOPS to access another authorised service without signing in again. In other words, a HOPS account could eventually be useful for more than accessing HOPS itself. If your organisation has a system that could benefit from authentication using HOPS, we'd be interested to hear from you. Please discuss it with the person responsible for IT within your organisation and then contact us through the HOPS Helpdesk. The Identity Platform is an important investment in the underlying HOPS platform, making authentication more consistent today while creating new opportunities for security, integration and connected services in future.
Update 1518 6 September 2026	MFA and Updates Work MULTI-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION The time has come.... MFA will become mandatory for users with permission 015 (administer permissions) or 080 (admin login) from this week. This is designed to cover HOPS Admins, who are generally the users with these permissions, as they are the most potentially-damaging permissions. (This was previously advertised at the start of the year.) Set up via the My HOPS Account link in the avatar in the top right hand corner of HOPS. More information: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/mfa --- FORMAT UPDATES Updates are taking place to the format of various tables and forms around HOPS. There should be no functional changes. If you find anywhere where the formatting has gone wrong, eg table borders or spacing between page items, please let us know via the Helpdesk. Thank you. --- ASSET MANAGEMENT SYSTEM UPDATE WORK The Asset Management System pages are undergoing overhaul. There should be no negative changes (but there will be some additional functionality). If you find anything not working correctly please let us know via the Helpdesk. Thank you
Update 1514 1 September 2026	New HOPS Directors Appointed Hello everyone, Here is an update on the HOPS succession planning activities. I am pleased to say that progress is now taking place at a good pace. Thank you to everyone who has given feedback throughout this process, and the many subscribers who have contributed their views and aspirations. As previously advertised, I am concentrating on re-structuring the management of HOPS. As previously advertised, I have appointed Alexander Seal to replace me as Program Manager. This officially takes place on 28 September but there will be a steady hand-over over a period of a few months to ensure continuity. Alex has been involved in HOPS for many years and has an very good understanding of the system, so I am confident he is well placed to take HOPS forward. Furthermore, a new team of directors is now being appointed. The directors will provide strategy direction for HOPS, remove a potential single point of risk from having one person in charge, and ensure that big decision-making is scrutinised and controlled. I hope this addresses some of the concerns about management structure that have been highlighted during the discussions on HOPS succession planning. The new directors are: * Rob Green Rob is one of the founding HOPS Admins (he has been serving long enough to have a three-digit U number!). He has been involved with HOPS for many years both as a HOPS Admin at the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway and through being involved in internal discussions about many HOPS developments. Rob was closely-involved in the original competence elements implementation in 2016. Rob has a lot of experience of governance and commercial both in a volunteer capacity and in his professional main-line role, bringing valuable skills to the table. * Graham Hukins Graham has very wide experience in heritage railway and wider tourism and commercial management, including in his current role as the General Manager of the North Norfolk Railway, which is a big HOPS user, and one of the largest users of the retail systems. Graham's business management expertise, especially in contexts outside heritage railways, will be very useful in HOPS's continued business development. * Ernest Elsworth-Wilson Ernest has also been a senior user of HOPS for a more than ten years, through his various roles at the South Devon Railway where he is now General Manager. Ernest has a background in main-line operations management as well as nearly all aspects of operating and locomotive work on heritage railways. * David Nelson-Brown David is Managing Director of Bodmin Railway, as well as running his own 15-inch narrow-gauge railways at Perrygrove and at Evesham, giving over 20 years of experience in managing both volunteer and employed railway business and financial management. It should be noted that the directors are appointed to represent the interests of HOPS and its users, they are not representatives of their home railways. All are committed to ensuring HOPS provides long-term benefit to the sectors and communities it serves through the provision and development of services and technology that meet the needs of its customers and users. We will arrange a get-to-know-you Teams meeting for the railways, Alexander and the directors to introduce themselves as soon as they are all in post. There are no other planned staff changes as a result of this, so the technical expertise and developers building and maintaining HOPS remains the same, as does the customer service staff. If you wish to, you can view details of the rest of the HOPS team here: https://www.hops.org.uk/about_team.php I will also be a director in the very short term to ensure corporate memory is maintained. After that I will remain available for assistance or background knowledge if required. If you have any questions about any of the succession planning activities going on please contact me or Alex or any of the new directors above. Thank you very much again Danny Scroggins
Update 1511 30 August 2026	HOPS Subscription Fees - Correction to Link Apologies to railways in Australia, the link in the previous system update was incorrect. The correct links, visible to HOPS Admins, are: UK: https://www.hops.org.uk/railway_detail.php?t=8 Australia: https://www.hops.org.au/railway_detail.php?t=8
Update 1508 30 August 2026	HOPS Subscription Fees SUBSCRIPTION FEES HOPS subscription fees are normally adjusted in August each year, but you may have noticed that this has not taken place this year (2026). We held off revising the subscription fees in August 2026 while discussions about succession planning were ongoing. As things are starting to look a bit clearer in that respect now we are in a position to share details of HOPS price changes this year. There is quite a significant disparity between subscription fees paid by roughly-equivalent railways at present. This is due to factors such as various discounts being applied, the time in history at which a railway joined HOPS, and what other things have been negotiated over the years. To remedy this we initially planned to introduce a banded structure based on turnover, but as soon as this was advertised we were inundated with representation from railways about why various elements of turnover shouldn't be counted, and it was clear there was going to be ill feeling. Therefore we have taken a great deal of time to assess each subscriber individually and identify a fee change that brings everyone closer to paying an amount approximately the same as roughly-equivalent other subscribers. We hope that this is as fair as possible. If your fee increases, you will recognise that this reflects the fact that you have benefited from HOPS at a lower cost than other equivalent railways in previous years so will hopefully not feel aggrieved. DISCOUNTS We are pleased to be able to continue to offer a discount for subscribers that reliably pay by direct debit. This is being increased to 5%, reflecting the time saving that this provides for HOPS in chasing invoices. The Raildays Promotion Discount is also being increased to 5%. It is envisaged that both of these are in the control of the subscriber in the majority of cases. No action is needed to claim the Direct Debit Discount, if you are paying bills by this method then the discount will be applied automatically, and be shown on your invoice. The Raildays Promotion Discount requires opting-in, if you are opted-in the discount will be shown on your invoice. If you aren't currently in and would like to receive this discount please let us know. More details: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/raildays-promotion-programme The ticket sales discount recognises the significant contribution that this part of the system makes to HOPS's ongoing financial stability and ability to provide its services, and rewards the subscribers that enable this. This discount is achieved in increasing percentages from 5% to 30% on turning over of at least 20,000/year of payments which are processed via HOPS. Railways that have negotiated rates with HOPS, such as those who have recently joined, will retain their negotiated rate until August 2027. Organisations involved in multi-year deals will remain on those deals until the agreed end date. These organisations have been advised. FREE BASIC HOPS Basic HOPS stopped being offered for free some years ago, but a small number of small subscribers have retained this arrangement by 'grandfather rights'. Regrettably we are no longer in a position to offer this and, recognising that HOPS has developed significantly since this was the case, the Basic HOPS fee will apply from 1 March 2027. RATES This individual rate for each subscriber is visible to HOPS on this page: UK: https://www.hops.org.uk/railway_detail.php?t=8 Australia: https://www.hops.com.au/railway_detail.php?t=8 --- If anyone has any questions or wishes to discuss any of the above (or you believe an error has been made) please do contact us and we will be happy to discuss. Thank you.
Update 1505 17 August 2026	Styles Work Hello, Work is currently taking place to update the HOPS user interface so there is a common style across all pages. Previously there was a marked difference between pages. "Old HOPS" used the native design of your operating system, whereas "New HOPS" used a style system based on Android smartphones. This led to inconsistencies - you may have noticed that things like picking a date on a calendar popup were slightly different depending on which page you were on. In "New HOPS" things like tables were disproportionately padded and spaced out which made it hard to achieve a good level of information density. The style framework we have chosen is deliberately very similar in design to "New HOPS". We learned from the transition to "New HOPS" that it takes people a little while to get used to a change in user interface, so we have taken that on board. There will be noticeable changes, especially on "Old HOPS" pages, but these are generally in accordance with bringing the format of the page into the familiar New HOPS style. While we are in the process of transitioning pages to the new style framework you might notice some places where it's broken. Please report these through the helpdesk and we will attend to them as quickly as we can. Thank you
Update 1502 16 August 2026	HOPS Subscription Fees HOPS subscription fees are normally adjusted in August each year, but you may have noticed that this has not taken place this year. We held off revising the subscription fees in August 2026 while discussions about succession planning were ongoing. As things are starting to look a bit clearer in that respect now we will be in a position to share details of a new HOPS pricing structure soon. There is quite a significant disparity between subscription fees paid by roughly-equivalent railways at present. This is due to factors such as various discounts being applied, the time in history at which a railway joined HOPS, and what other things have been negotiated over the years. To remedy this we will be introducing a new price-band structure based on turnover - similar to way HRA subscription fees are arranged. Most railways will find a change in their fees, some increase and some decrease, but the new price-band structure will be more transparent for everyone. We hope that, if your fee increases, you will recognise that this reflects the fact that you have benefited from HOPS at a lower cost than other equivalent railways in previous years so will hopefully not feel too aggrieved. That being said we will be happy to have discussions with individual railways if you feel unfairly treated or unhappy with the new arrangements. Discounts for making payment by Direct Debit will continue. Greater discounts will be available for subscribers of the ticket sales system (above a threshold), recognising the more significant financial contribution this makes to the sustainability of HOPS. We will share details of the new pricing structure shortly and implement it from 1 October 2026. Thank you Danny Scroggins
Update 1499 16 August 2026	HOPS Succession Planning Update ** HOPS ADMINS - Please ensure this is forwarded to the relevant senior managers / directors. I have received contact from several railways' directors who are unaware this is taking place, and distributing communications like this is an important part of the duties of a HOPS Admin. ** Hello everyone, Here is an update on the HOPS succession planning activities. I'm sorry this isn't progressing as quickly as we would all like, but I am taking great care to make sure it is planned and implemented properly before making changes. Unfortunately I also feel I should warn everyone that there are some participants in our industry who would benefit from railways not having the use of a tool such as HOPS and are callously stirring rumours that HOPS is going to be switched off. Obviously this isn't true, and I'm taking great care to ensure that it remains on a good footing for the future and communicating openly with everyone about what is happening. If you have any questions or concerns please let me know. Thank you to everyone who has given feedback and comments on the proposals and their aspirations for the future. This has been very useful in determining what are the priorities for railways that need to be protected, and what are the nice-to-haves (and what's not required at all). Many discussions have taken place with railways and others and it has become clear that it is going to be extremely difficult to find a shareholding model where the ownership, voting power, director appointment arrangements, etc, satisfy the range of clients that use HOPS. Even accepting that it is impossible to please all the people all the time, the nature and range of magnitudes of railway business among our users has meant that pleasing even a majority will be almost impossible. I committed to you that nothing would take place unless it was fully thought-through as the best outcome and, as no obvious single best way forward has emerged, nothing has yet been changed. To avoid this taking up endless time for HOPS and clients, and to reduce uncertainty, I have decided to split this task of HOPS Succession into two and handle each separately: "Ownership" and "Management". Placing Ownership to one side for the time being, I will concentrate first on how HOPS is managed going forward: I still intend to step back from the management of HOPS. To replace me, I am pleased to say that Alexander Seal, already known to most of you as he has been involved with HOPS almost since day one, will be the new Program Manager - responsible for the day-to-day operation of the HOPS system and business. Alexander already has a detailed understanding of HOPS both from the operational and the technical sides, as well as experience from main line and management positions on heritage railways, so is ideally-placed to serve HOPS well in this role. He also has been instrumental in many of the significant developments in HOPS over the years (often fighting hard for your development requests for you!) There will be a smooth changeover from me to Alex over the next couple of months - recognising that continuity is an area in which you desired reassurance. Furthermore, to provide balance and a range of backgrounds and inputs and guidance, I intend to appoint a board of directors, drawn from experienced members of the heritage railway community. These will give long-term and strategic direction, and reduce dependence on a single person, as has been the case up to now and I recognise has been a concern. Discussion is ongoing with the potential holders of these roles, and I will update everyone when that is concluded. It is my intention to remain as a director initially, again to provide continuity, before stepping down. I'll continue to be available to give advice, or explanation about how/why things were originally formed, to Alex and the new directors if desired, to ensure corporate memory is not lost. We will arrange a 'get to know you' Teams meeting for the railways, Alexander and the directors to introduce themselves as soon as they are all in post. There are no other planned staff changes as a result of this, so the technical expertise and developers building and maintaining HOPS remains the same, as does the customer service staff. Alex has a number of exciting plans for the future, which he will communicate to you separately, both for developments of functionality in HOPS as well as how the business develops and adapts for the future. It is easy to get bogged down in one's own ways, so I am very pleased that HOPS will reap the benefits of this new enthusiasm at the helm. The matter of ownership will be returned to in the future. For now I am going to concentrate my efforts on embedding the management aspect which, as you can imagine, is no small task. Therefore the question of railways finding funds to buy shares is no longer the case for the moment. In fact, no action is required from railways at all, apart from letting us know if you have any questions or comments on the proceedings. I hope this will not be a disappointment to railways that were keen on obtaining an ownership stake in HOPS at this stage, but the feedback I have received from most railways leads me to believe the majority will be pleased that they don't have to find extra funds to purchase a stake, and more so not worry about which other railways are doing so. I'm looking forward to the future of HOPS - and to seeing it continue to develop at the railways I work at. I hope that concentrating on the management aspects of succession planning first will give you all some confidence and reassurance, rather than changing both management and ownership at the same time. I feel confident with that HOPS is in good hands for the future, and these changes will allow me to step back from the day-to-day running of the business and give HOPS new leadership and stability it needs to continue growing and supporting the heritage sector for many years to come. Please let me know if you have any questions about any of the succession planning activities going on. Danny Scroggins
Update 1493 15 August 2026	Roster Settings and new Continuous Improvement Items Updates to Rosters and new Continuous Improvement items ROSTERS A new option has been added to Department Roster Settings to show users outside the department in the 'Additional' turns drop-down. This has been an option for the main turn for a long time, but this new option enables additional turns to be allocated to users outside the department. --- The default setting for making a turn 'Offered' is now an option in Roster Settings. --- CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT https://www.hops.org.uk/continuous_improvement.php Two new Continuous Improvement items have been added: * Checking FAQs for accuracy Answers to Commercial FAQs, which are presented in POS and publicly in the Raildays app and website, now record the date they were last updated. A check is due 12 months later. The date on the page goes red if the due date passes. Random dates due in 2026 have been assigned to all existing FAQs to space them out. If you prefer to check them all in one go that is fine, and they will all then be due on the same date next year. A red/green status is shown, which is green if there are no overdue checks. * Addresses for locations Improvement in Raildays App - Display of Post Codes & Driving Directions - Each location at the railway can have an address. This is used in a few places in HOPS and, importantly, is now used in Raildays for showing users post codes and giving users driving directions to the site. Please could addresses, including post codes, be added to railway locations in order to provide maximum benefit to railways in the Raildays app? P442 required. A red/green status is shown, which is green if all public locations have addresses. --- Thank you Danny Scroggins
Update 1487 15 August 2026	Updates to Rosters and new Continuous Improvement items ROSTERS A new option has been added to Department Roster Settings to show users outside the department in the 'Additional' turns drop-down. This has been an option for the main turn for a long time, but this new option enables additional turns to be allocated to users outside the department. --- The default setting for making a turn 'Offered' is now an option in Roster Settings. --- CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT https://www.hops.org.uk/continuous_improvement.php Two new Continuous Improvement items have been added: * Checking FAQs for accuracy Answers to Commercial FAQs, which are presented in POS and publicly in the Raildays app and website, now record the date they were last updated. A check is due 12 months later. The date on the page goes red if the due date passes. Random dates due in 2026 have been assigned to all existing FAQs to space them out. If you prefer to check them all in one go that is fine, and they will all then be due on the same date next year. A red/green status is shown, which is green if there are no overdue checks. * Addresses for locations Improvement in Raildays App - Display of Post Codes & Driving Directions - Each location at the railway can have an address. This is used in a few places in HOPS and, importantly, is now used in Raildays for showing users post codes and giving users driving directions to the site. Please could addresses, including post codes, be added to railway locations in order to provide maximum benefit to railways in the Raildays app? P442 required. A red/green status is shown, which is green if all public locations have addresses. --- Thank you Danny Scroggins
Update 1482 8 August 2026	Issue Submitting Forms We are aware of an issue when submitting some forms in HOPS following development work yesterday and today. Some users are being presented with a blank page after attempting to save. We are working to resolve this. Apologies for the issue. Public retail sales websites and POS machines are not affected.
Update 1479 7 July 2026	HOPS Succession Planning Update Hello Thank you to everyone who has engaged with this succession-planning exercise. I didn't want too much time to elapse without an update, so here is what's going on at the moment. The meeting with railways created lots of actions for me, and I am dealing with the detail of those. I'm also trying my best to create a way forward that addresses the key risks and concerns that were raised in the meeting. I am now holding meeting with a small team of experienced HOPS Admins and supporters who have agreed to potentially become directors in the future, and a person who is potentially willing to be a General Manager. These appointments aren't definite yet so I won't reveal names just yet. One definite theme coming out of the plans is to stage the various parts so that there isn't a sudden change, and that everyone can see a roadmap, so that is what we will try to work on. There has been lots of follow-up comments from railways, thank you for those. As you can image they span all extremes of possibilities, but they particularly relate to control and cost. There are a lot of things for us to work through, and nothing is changing yet. Our next meeting with the potential new staff involved is next week, so I will feed back to everyone again after that has taken place. If you have any questions in the meantime please let me know. Thank you Danny Scroggins
Update 1473 14 May 2026	User Addresses UNRELIABLE ADDRESSES A new 'mark as unreliable' box has been added to users' postal addresses. This is shown only to users with P407, and can be used to indicate when a user's address is suspected to be incorrect, eg if post has been returned. A details box is provided to enter details, and this is shown on the Address History tab. The address gains an 'address unreliable' label next to it. This is shown in several places around the system, where addresses are shown, such as on staff lists. Addresses that are unreliable have a 'Remove Unreliable Mark' button, for users with P407 only. Again, a details box is provided. The old and new records, including the record of it being marked unreliable and then that mark removed, are retained in the Address History. This is also starting to be automatically populated by HOPS if ID cards, membership cards, or shareholder cards are returned undelivered. --- MAP LINK Did you know that a user's address on their profile is a link to Google Maps? No? Nor did I! Well I probably did in the past but the link blends in a bit too well it wasn't obvious. This has been changed to a map pin icon to make it more obvious. --- ADDRESS HISTORY An 'Address History' tab has been added to user's profiles. It is visible to users with permission 407 and the user themselves. Information back to 2020 is shown where we have it or have been able to infer it. Some information, such as who approves the change, hasn't been recorded in the past but is recorded from now on. This has been requested following some examples of fraudulent / illegal activity by heritage railway workers and the address history becoming relevant in identifying people. Available advice isn't consistent on how long this data should be kept for. Data in order to identify a worker who might subsequently suffer from an illness related to exposure to hazardous substances, eg, Mesothelioma, has to be kept for 40 years, or until they turn 80, whichever is longer - so the question we will seek to clarify is whether it is appropriate to retain all the user's addresses while they worked for the company, or only the address at the time they left. Like so many things, it seems to be there is no 'official' line, but if you get it wrong then you're wrong... --- Thank you Danny Scroggins
Update 1470 12 May 2026	HOPS Succession Planning Part 2 At the end of April I circulated by HOPS Succession Planning email. If you haven't seen the contents of that, it can be found here: https://www.hops.org.uk/update/1406 Here is an update. -------------------- Thank you to everyone who has replied to my email about succession planning in HOPS. I received a number of responses that I wasn't expecting, so I thought it would be useful to update everyone. Particularly thank you to those who have raised concerns and have given time to discussing them and exploring potential mitigations. As many of you will know from when we have discussed developments, I do believe that if you discuss something long enough you eventually find the right solution, even if just be eliminating all the wrong ones! So it is nice that many Admins have been willing to go through that discussion time. A key message to give is that I am fully open to hearing ideas that supplement or are completely different to what I said in my last email. Some new ideas have already been offered, thank you for those, but if anyone else is thinking of options or potential better ways of going about this then please do let me know. I also encourage Admins to speak to each other if they want to and discuss opinions. The objective here for all of us is for HOPS to thrive in the best way possible for railways. What has been expressed can be summarised into concern that HOPS's independence from railways will be lost when it is owned by railways, and a concern that a large number of different railways might try to steer development in conflicting directions. Of course everyone has a different view on what would be the best direction. I know that some of the alternative ideas on ways forward being discussed mitigate this, and might achieve a preferable balance of ownership for railways to have confidence in the decision-making. I'll circulate those if asked. For clarity, it was my intention that the owner railways would appoint a smaller board to do the actual steering, rather than every decision being an opportunity for division, much like how shareholders appoint the board of heritage railways. And I am hopeful that everyone will subscribe to the view that they always have in the past that everyone gets 90% of what they want, and sacrifices the 10% for the greater good. Here are some other FAQs: * What is the timescale? This will be dependent on how the next few weeks go, but I think getting the plans in place in the next three months, and the changeover being a gradual process over the three months following that is probable. There will be plenty of comms, and plenty of hand-over to the new management. I am conscious of minimising the timescale to reduce uncertainty for railways. * Why is this change necessary? I did not go into great detail in my original message, but since many of you have asked I will elaborate here. It is a purely personal thing rather than a business thing. All of us get to a point in jobs where we feel it is time for a change. I have always built and promoted HOPS as a 'best practice' system, and one that I could say I believed railways "should" be using. I don't see it as a software development service that blindly builds whatever is asked. Of course the majority of that best-practice and requests for development have come from the user community, which is great, but they have always been evaluated against criteria of whether we believed they were appropriate to the extent that we could encourage other railways to use them. In many cases, long discussions took place that exploited the experience of the individual railway, HOPS's experience of all the other railways, and my professional background in railway operations and safety. This has all be a great way to achieve good developments, and that is what I have enjoyed. In recent years it has become apparent that some railways have come to expect HOPS to be much more like a software service that is expected to do as its told, because "the customer is always right" (quote), and are sometimes offended at the mere prospect of requests being subject to discussion, let alone negotiation. This isn't the operation that I want to run, or where my skills lie. * Will you still be involved? I intend to make myself available to the new management for advice or background into why we built things the way we did or what risks we considered/mitigated in order that they can make the decisions with all the information - it is important not to lose that corporate memory. I do want HOPS to continue and to flourish, so I will offer whatever help as best I can. But I don't intend to be in charge of it or involved in the day-to-day running. There is a good team that delivers HOPS, it is not all just me, so don't be alarmed it'll be a case of totally starting from scratch. https://www.hops.org.uk/about_team.php I will still be a user of HOPS in my other companies that make use of it. * Will there be a share issue prospectus? No, I don't intend to produce a prospectus, or to spend time trying to /persuade/ railways to become involved. Despite its rising income, HOPS should be considered as essentially a not-for-profit business. Only take part if you want to be part of something that helps heritage railways, and hopefully locally saves the cost of time and effort, rather than in the hope of a cash financial return. I'll be happy to share financial information etc though with interested railways. * Are suggestions of alternative plans / ideas allowed? Yes, all ideas welcome. They will either be relevant to me or for discussion by interested railways. * Would it be better if HOPS continued to be an independent commercial operation? Maybe. And this would protect you from the concerns of other railways having a formal steer on the direction of HOPS, but expose you to the owners of that company being in control. Ultimately someone has to be in charge. There are some discussions taking place (by others) which may explore this further, which I’ll make sure are shared if asked. I encourage all options to be examined. * Is there a deadline for expressions of interest? Please try to let me know by the end of May. If you're waiting for other dependencies, eg board meetings, then let me know and I'll know you're a 'maybe' rather than a 'not interested'. If anyone has any other concerns or ideas please let me know. Thank you Danny Scroggins
Update 1467 11 May 2026	Ticket "Excursions" HEADLINE: For railways that offer tickets for "travel", this is a better system than the original journey picker and what you should be doing! If your travel tickets are all "events" then this doesn't apply to you. -- An improvement to the method of visitors selecting their journey for 'travel' has been implemented. Where previously a visitor used a 'main line' style journey planner, selecting start and end stations and a ticket type, etc, a new hand-holding flow called 'Excursions' has been created. Excursions are travel options that are already partly or completely populated with journey details. This reduces the number of choices that a visitor needs to make, which feedback indicates is a good thing at attractions where 99% of visitors choose the same option. For example, at Bodmin Railway, 99% of passengers buy a circular trip from the main station, which is the the middle. This will become the only option offered: https://bodmin.hops.org.uk/tickets/travel/plan Once the customer selects that excursion all the details of where the ticket is to and from and via are invisibly fixed without the user taking any action. A 'I know what I'm doing, give me all the options' button is provided for users that want all the options, and this leads to the current journey planner system. The above link to Bodmin is in the live system, but it is not the default that the customer sees yet. A changeover switch is available to send users to the Excursions page by default rather than the current ticket builder. Nearby, at the South Devon Railway, it is not the case that 99% of visitors choose the same option. 70% of visitors choose a round trip from Buckfastleigh (one end of the line) and 25% from Totnes (the other end). https://sdr.hops.org.uk/tickets/travel/plan It can be seen that two excursions are provided - both round trips. Here are some details about the excursion options available: SINGLE TICKET - Origin must be pre-determined. Destination can be pre-determined or selected by user. RETURN TICKET - Origin must be pre-determined. Destination can be pre-determined or selected by user. RANGER TICKET - Origin must be pre-determined. CIRCULAR TICKET - Origin must be pre-determined. Destination 1 and 2 can be pre-determined or selected by user. It is also possible to make them interchangeable. In the Bodmin case, above, the visitor does not care which way round the railway they go, so all train times from the middle station are offered, and which time the customer selects will fix which order destination 1 and destination 2 are applied. Where a destination is not given, the customer will be asked to select it. When designing your Excursions, consider carefully the balance between 'giving the user all the options' and 'making the user's life easy by guiding them to what they probably want'. This is especially the case on railways with many stations, which casual visitors may not appreciate some are more or less intended to be travelled-to than others. * NOTE * - None of the above affects the sale in any way. It is just a method of helping the customer select what they want to buy. Once it is in the basket and then purchased it is a ticket like any other. (If you are looking for it to be preserved, then an event session is the appropriate thing to use instead. Please contact us if you require advice.). The Excursions can be seen in Ticket System > Ticket System Settings > Travel tab > Excursions tab.
Update 1411 9 May 2026	Consistent Styles Work is taking place making consistent the style of tables, forms, and date-pickers. If you find a place where these are not working properly please let us know via a support ticket. Likely failure modes are tables without borders and/or background colours, and date pickers with incorrectly constrained ranges. Thank you
Update 1407 9 May 2026	System Updates We have resurrected the System Updates system. https://www.hops.org.uk/updates I stopped posting updates to this a couple of months ago as some users received the email notifications more than once. I think we have fixed this now, and the test update (about the reinstatement of postcode lookup) seemed to go ok. Receiving email updates is no longer controlled by a permission (was 168), it is now something that any user can subscribe to / unsubscribe from at any time. The option to do this is at the top of the System Updates page. We will trickle out notifications of updates that have taken place in the last couple of months to avoid bombarding everyone. When this change took place I automatically subscribed everyone who had the old permission. Thank you
Update 1404 8 May 2026	Address Lookup Following some further developments and thanks to Graham at NNR for some advice, we now have some improved options to offer! There are two options for everyone, which apply to both address lookup in HOPS and in the retail systems: Option 1 HOPS has managed to become a 're-seller' of the address lookup service, which means we have been able to obtain much better volume rates. We will be able to re-sell this to railways at 3p per address (an improvement on the previously-advertised 5p). This is ready to go almost straight away, so please let us know if you would like to join this. I have updated this page so that you can see the estimated costs for your railway based on previous volumes: https://www.hops.org.uk/address_lookup_preview.php Option 2 Ideal Postcodes, the company that provides the address data, also has rates for charities with a turnover of less than £10m: * Up to 100 addresses = free * Up to 2000 addresses = £9/month * Up to 25000 addresses = £49/month. https://ideal-postcodes.co.uk/sector/charities We have heroically arranged it so that railways can set up their own account with Ideal Postcodes and obtain the charity rate directly with them. You will then provide us with your api key and HOPS will integrate with your account. You will settle your bill (if any) directly with Ideal Postcodes, and HOPS will charge railways £5 a month for the integration (same prices as it used to be). There is a 10% discount from Ideal Postcodes for "annual billing" - I'm not sure if this is in rear or in advance, they also have some concept of credits which expire after a year, so I'm not sure the annual option is necessarily better. But it might be. Railways that aren't charities are welcome to sign up directly with Ideal Postcodes if you want to, but of course you won't get the charity rate and probably won't get a rate as good as we can offer as a re-seller. If you wish to do this please sign up with Ideal Postcodes via their Charity sign-up form (link above). They will send you some other forms and terms to agree to, and you will also need to follow their instructions to sign up for a Royal Mail licence. We have just been through it all to set it up as a test and we were guided through it by a real person - it is advisable to tell them that you will be using a third-party developed service so you won't need all the technical assistance. Let us know when you're signed up an have an API key and we will put it in HOPS. You can also use this same account to integrate in other systems that you have if you wish, it won't affect the HOPS integration (it is advisable to use separate API keys for each integration). --- If anyone planning on Option 2 wants to use Option 1 in the short term before moving to Option 2 when that's set up that is fine to do. Please let me know. I have made you a lovely chart which shows the best (cheapest) option for different volumes of addresses. The tipping point is 467 addresses. https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=3092328450962876 This doesn't consider the 10% for annual billing advantage, or the potential disadvantage of unused credits, so I think on balance it's honest. All the above relates to address search. Phone and email validator is available as well, but we'll negotiate about that later. Please let us know if you have any queries, if you wish to use the HOPS-re-sold service, or when you have your own API key you wish to use. Thank you Danny Scroggins.
Update 1417 3 May 2026	HOPS Team A 'Team' page has been added to the 'About' section of HOPS, which shows the people who run HOPS. https://www.hops.org.uk/about_team.php
Update 1420 30 April 2026	Turn Periods & Roster Settings These have caused some headaches over the last few weeks. The arrangements are: - All turns now have a period. - "" (blank) is an acceptable period, and equivalent to what 'no period' was previously. - It is possible to add/edit/archive periods in Roster Settings. - It is not possible to have two periods with the same name in the same department. This caused us quite a bit of head-scratching, until we realised that users were trying to create periods with the same names as archived periods! - If a user tries to create a new turn period with the same name as a previously-archived one in the same department, the old one will be un-archived. - If a user tries to create a new turn period with the same name as an existing (non-archived) one, a new one won't be created and the turn will have the period that already exists. Sorry for the unexpected issues surrounding this "little job"! At the same time, the Roster Settings pages were also updated to include options to add, edit, and archive Roster Rows and Roster Columns. I imagine we will remove the ability to add new Rows, Columns and Periods on the turn editing pages (unless feedback tells us otherwise...!) to try to avoid the well-meaning but inconsistent addition of loads of duplicate and near-duplicate entries (eg "Day", "Days", "Daytime", "Daays").
Update 1414 30 April 2026	Succession Planning An email was circulated about succession planning on 30 April. If you have not seen it you can view the content here: https://www.hops.org.uk/update/1406 I have received a lot of interesting responses and questions, so I will issue some more comms on this soon. Thank you to everyone who has responded.
Update 1406 30 April 2026	HOPS Succession Planning We are formalising the succession plan for HOPS, to make sure that it has a sustainable future in delivering services for heritage railways. It has previously been discussed that a second company would be set up, with distributed ownership, to eventually take over the operations of HOPS. However, it has been identified that it would instead be more straightforward to 'nationalise' the original HOPS company itself by arranging for the railways and organisations that use it to have an ownership stake in it instead. Therefore we are going to make this our objective, to the point where /control/ is in the hands of railways. Companies that use HOPS will soon be able to become shareholders in HOPS, and those companies will be able to arrange and control the management of HOPS and therefore the direction of development and investment. They will also set the level of subscriptions fees for shareholder and non-shareholder subscribers, and be owners of a company with a growing retail systems income that has great ability to support heritage railways in the future. Shares will be limited to one per company, to avoid one company being able to unilaterally control the whole system. The cost of a share will be proportional to the size of the business, in the same way that subscription fees have always been, and is expected to be in the area of 1.2x the Advanced HOPS annual subscription fee for the each railway. It is envisaged that my (Danny's) role in HOPS will decrease in the future, as the new railway-appointed management takes over, to the point where it is completely controlled by its new shareholders. To this end, railways are now invited to express interest in acquiring shares in Heritage Operations Processing Ltd which owns the HOPS system, including the public-facing retail systems, the Raildays system, website and mobile app. This is an opportunity for all railways to have a stake-hold in the future direction of HOPS, and gain confidence in ensuring it survives in the long term for everyone's benefit. Once expressions of interest are obtained, we will arrange a meeting for a future plan and management structure and company structure to be created. Please express your company's interest to danny.scroggins@hops.org.uk If necessary, please forward this information to the railway's General Manager or other person who is in a position to make a decision on this. It is important that, especially if not taking part, railways have made that decision consciously. In the meantime, HOPS remains 'business as usual', where we continue to work hard and invest in system developments and supporting heritage railways in every way that we can. It has been my great pleasure to lead HOPS for the last 17 years, and I give my thanks to everyone who has collaborated with us on developments over the years. I hope this new approach and structure will make HOPS even more useful for the future, and I encourage everyone to take part in it. Thank you Danny Scroggins
Update 1399 6 February 2026	Address Lookup Unavailable The company that HOPS uses to provide the address/postcode lookup services (getaddress.io) has ceased trading, and therefore the facility has stopped working. We have removed the form fields so that we don't present a broken tool to user/customers. More information will be published about a way forward when we have looked in to alternative providers.
Update 1396 5 February 2026	Work on User Photos Work is taking place on the presentation of user photos. If you find any places in the system where photos are not being displayed where they normally are please let us know. Thank you
Update 1393 5 February 2026	HOPS Comms emails (Resolved) (Resolved) We are working on an issue with sending of emails relating to HOPS Comms messages. We will fix this as soon as possible. No messages have been lost, and we don't expect any emails to be lost either. Thank you for your patience. Further background: As part of major overhaul work taking place this January (timed to avoid the busiest times for most railways) we undertook work to resolve the 'sending overnight emails more than once' problem, which was a safeguard introduced to re-try emails that failed to send. [Unfortunately a side-effect was that a false-positive 'fail to send' resulted in a re-try too...] This work involved alterations to background functions that happen without making the user wait, such as sending of HOPS Comms emails. Thank you to everyone for your patience during all this work. We are trying to minimise the 'short term pain' and maximise the 'long term gain'.
Update 1384 2 February 2026	ID Cards Updates We have changed the buttons when an AtW is created. I'm sorry it has been necessary to change this so soon after it was all last changed, but we have found that [in our quest to please all the people all the time!] we have ended up with contradictory options, and inconsistent behaviour regarding which type of card a user will receive. There are now two sets of radio buttons: First set: Respect or don't respect the user's preference Second set: - When respecting the preference, what to do when a user selects 'physical card'. - When not respecting the preference, which type of card to give the user. In all cases, the card type is set for the user at the point of AtW generation and can be re-used next time if desired by selecting the 'retain existing setting'. No-one has an 'existing setting' at present. All the user-facing settings are unaffected (eg opting in/out of having a physical card). Several of the columns on all the different tabs have been tweaked or re-named to make clear the difference between the user's preference, the type of card they're destined to get, and the type of card they currently have. We have not produced any cards since Saturday morning in order to implement these changes before any more are processed. If, on checking, you now find that a user is destined to receive an incorrect type of card, and it hasn't been produced yet (so they are in the Generated or Approved tabs), you can cancel the AtW and start again if you wish. (If the AtW is in the Live tab then the card has already been produced and it is too late to change. Please contact us if you believe you have been mis-sold your card!) I'm aware there's a million support tickets outstanding for various ID Card issues, and we'll continue to work through those now. I hope that these changes will put the ID Card system on an even keel again, and we can finalise some of the last bits, such as Temporary Cards, etc. Thank you all for your patience.
Update 1390 2 February 2026	MFA and POS lables on permissions Labels have been added to various places in the system where permissions are shown, to indicate which permissions result in requiring MFA and which are used in POS. Remember that MFA will become a requirement of permissions 015 and 080 at the end of February 2026.
Update 1375 23 January 2026	MFA Becoming Mandatory for HOPS Admins HOPS encourages users to make user of multi-factor authentication to keep their accounts, and their railway's data, secure: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/mfa MFA is recommended for all users who have access to details about other users, so effectively everyone down as far as heads of departments and roster clerks. MFA will become mandatory for HOPS Admins from 1 March 2026 - that's users with permissions 015 (administer permissions) and 080 (admin-login as other users). If you have these permissions, you can be ready in good time by setting up MFA on your account in advance of the deadline by visiting the 'person' avatar in the top right hand corner of HOPS and selecting My HOPS Account and then scrolling down to 'Multi-Factor Authentication' and following the prompts. Any HOPS user can set up MFA on their account if they wish to. If you have any questions please contact your HOPS Admin, or open a support ticket if you are a HOPS Admin.
Update 1359 5 December 2025	ID Cards Overhaul - Action Required ACTION REQUIRED by railways that use the ID Card System. Please see below. This update is applicable to UK heritage railways only. Arrangements for railways in other countries will follow. --- The HOPS ID Cards system is now back online following extensive overhaul. To enable physical cards that last for several years, while maintaining an annual renewal in HOPS, the concept of 'Cards' has been split into two concepts: 'Authority to Work' and 'ID Cards'. The Card just identifies the user, the only distinction between a 1-year card and a 3-year card is the material and the cost. The Authority to Work means the person is a legitimate, authorised worker, and this is the thing that is renewed every year. The exact same mechanism as previously used for ID Cards is still used for Authority to Work (eg Department Confirmation, Generating and Approving, Department Confirmation, Personal Details Check, etc). Apart from making the terminology clear and providing additional cues on the pages, this process is unchanged. If you continue to follow your old process, but replace 'card' with 'AtW' in your mind, everything will work fine. AtW still update the appropriate competence element as cards did previously. The element is updated when the AtW is APPROVED. Every user has a setting for whether they will receive a 1-year card or a 3-year ID Card. This can't be changed by users themselves. It can be changed at the point of generation of the AtW. The three generation methods are still available - individual, user list, and renewal. As previously, 'renewal' is just another method of generating an AtW with some convenient (optional) other information shown. It doesn't make a difference to the system which method is used. A tick box has been added to the Generation page for 'automatic approval' to save this job having to be done separately, if desired. It is only shown when the user has permission to do approving. If ticked, the AtWs will be generated and approved in one go. You can still give users a choice of whether they would like to opt-in to having a Raildays card instead of a physical one. The user's preference, and their current setting for which type of physical card they will/would get is shown on the AtW generation pages to aid visibility. [We have not yet facilitated making the default into a Raildays card and requiring the user to opt for a physical card, we do still intend to do this.] The physical ID Cards are produced automatically, following the creation of an AtW, when required. There is no action required from the railway to do this. ID Cards are only produced if the AtW lasts longer than the user's current card: Ie, for a three-year card a new card will be sent in year 1 and 4, but not year 2 or 3. A card is only sent if the AtW is renewed, so there is no danger of wasted cards being sent for users who are no longer working. If one-year cards are used then a new card is sent every year (if the AtW is renewed). All 3-year cards expire at the end of March. The rollover for years is 1 October, so all 3-year cards are valid for a period between 2.5 and 3.5 years. Eg a 3-year card issued on 30 September 2005 will last until 31 March 2008; a 3-year card issued on 1 October 2005 will last until 31 March 2009. Three year cards are made of (recycled, recyclable) plastic. One-year cards are made from the existing laminated card stationery. For the first few days we will be manually checking the card printing output of the system to make sure it is all working correctly. If you find any issues please let us know, but please don't panic that the printing or cost will spiral in the case of a system error. We will resolve any that arise before printing and costs are incurred. Cards displayed in Raildays now keep the same number each year. So users with a card displayed in Raildays, receiving a new AtW for the new year, will not need to take any action in the Raildays app or the Time Register app. The card expiry will update automatically in Raildays, and TR will carry on without any changes. -- As previously advised, the cost of cards is changed to: * Cards displayed in Raildays - 21p (annual) * 1-year cards posted directly to users - 50p per card, 101p process and postage. Total 1.51. (Previously incorrectly advertised as 50+91=1.51. The postage was incorrect, the total was correct.) * 1-year cards posted in batches to the railway - 50p per card. Postage will be charged at cost. * 3-year cards posted directly to users - 2.07 per card, 91p process and postage. Total 2.98. (This is 20p less than the CURRENT cost of 3 x 1-year cards, and 1.55 less than the new cost of 3 x 1-year cards). * 3-year cards posted in batches to the railway - 2.07 per card and postage is charged at cost. For clarity, there is no cost attached to an AtW, or to Temporary Cards. -- Temporary ID cards is still offline. We did not intend for this to be affected by this work, but it was. We hope to have this available again over this weekend, but we were keen to get the main system back in place asap. -- ACTION REQUIRED - In order to make use of the new system, please could admins of UK heritage railways that issue HOPS ID Cards please email in to admin@hops.org.uk and state that you accept the new card costs as stated in this update of 5 December 2025? AtWs can be generated before this, but cannot be Approved until the costs are accepted (as this is the stage at which the physical card creation is started). -- I'm sorry this downtime has taken longer than planned, but I hope the new system achieves the cost savings that some railways desire, while continuing to provide the paper stationery that other railways desire. If anyone has any questions or queries please let us know. Thank you Danny Scroggins
Update 1356 28 November 2025	System Work Today - ID Cards and Time Register There will be some bumpiness today as the new ID Cards system is brought in to use. Time Register devices may delay in uploading to HOPS, but records won't be lost as TR devices will store up transactions, in the same way as they would in the case of internet connection failure, and then upload when they can. ID Card checking may be unavailable for periods of time. It is expected that the new ID Card interface will be available by early next week. We will be closely monitoring for errors and fixing any that arise. It isn't necessary to report errors related to ID Cards or Time Register unless they persist after today. If it is causing you an urgent problem then please contact HOPS HQ for assistance.
Update 1350 25 November 2025	ID Cards - System Changeover The changeover to the new ID cards system has now begun. It won't be possible to generate or approve ID cards for the next few days. It IS still possible to conduct Department Confirmation, so there is no need to hold up the renewal process for this, and this will all still be recognised when the system comes back again. For the short time the system is unavailable, for any new staff or existing staff needing replacements for lost cards, etc, the Temporary ID Card system can still be used. Thank you Danny Scroggins
Update 1344 24 November 2025	Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) is now available to all users in HOPS Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) is now available to all users in HOPS. MFA provides an extra layer of security on your HOPS account by requiring users to present multiple credentials, or factors, when logging in. Practically, this will be something users know (their password) and something they have (e.g. an authenticator app running on a smartphone). Requiring multiple factors makes it much harder for another person to login to a HOPS account maliciously, even if they steal a password. This helps to keep everyone's personal data secure. Thank you our test guinea pigs for providing useful feedback on this facility. For a user to enable MFA, they click the avatar in the top right corner of HOPS and select 'My HOPS Account'. Then scroll down the page to Multi-Factor Authentication, and follow the prompts to set it up. (Note passkeys is not yet available.) For more details, a help page about MFA, with a link to TOTP, is available here: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/mfa (The passkeys page is not yet published so that link does not go anywhere for the moment.) -- Permission 545 is now available if you wish to enforce MFA to any users. It is recommended that this is assigned via groups (as with all permissions), ie make it a requirement 'that the Loco Manager uses MFA', rather than 'that Bob uses MFA'. The permission does not do anything else or allow access to anything, it is just a means of enforcing MFA for certain groups/users via an existing and well-known mechanism. HOPS will enforce MFA on users with permissions 015 (Administer Permissions) and 080 (Admin-login) in the future, so starting to encourage users with those permissions into MFA now is advised to avoid a sudden change when it becomes enforced. Note - as with all permissions changes, permissions are cached for up to 15 minutes. To see an instant change the user will need to either F5 to refresh, or visit the avatar in the top right corner and select 'Refresh Session'. This isn't an absolute requirement, if not done then the requirement for MFA just won't come in to effect for 15 mins. -- FAQs from users: * Do I HAVE to use MFA? At the moment, no. In the not-too-distant future this will change and some users will be required to enrol in MFA. This will be users with high levels of access to personal data in HOPS. Individual railways may also extend to certain other roles or individuals. Your railway will tell you if this is the case. Any user can enrol if they wish to. * What if I don't have a smart phone? Most browsers are able to perform the role of an authenticator, so users without a smart phone can use this on whatever device they do use to browse HOPS. It is recognised that, given the nature of our railway work, there will be a number of senior users who are excellent and their railway skill, but not so comfortable with computer technology, which is why we are introducing this as softly as we can. Unfortunately we can't ignore the accepted industry practice requirement for MFA, so HOPS Admins and local IT Support will be able to help users in using authenticator apps or browser extensions. * I work for more than one railway. Can I use MFA for one and not others? MFA works at an account level (as once you are logged in you can jump between railways), so MFA will apply to your one and only set of user credentials. If you have not joined your accounts then HOPS does not know that you are the same person on two railways, so you could have MFA on one but not the other. Joining accounts is recommended, and means you only need one set of login credentials: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/joining-user-accounts * I sometimes log in on my phone and sometimes on my computer. MFA applies to the HOPS account, so will be required no matter which method is used to log in. This ensures that the protection applies to the whole access to your account, without leaving the door open to abuse on certain devices. If you have any other questions about MFA please speak to your HOPS Admin. --- Thank you to everyone who has taken part in the various trials of MFA and fed back their findings. If anyone has any queries please let us know via a support ticket. If anyone has any queries please let us know via a support ticket.
Update 1336 18 November 2025	SMS Service Unavailable Sending text messages is currently unavailable in HOPS due to a problem at our SMS provider. This will affect: - Confirming user telephone numbers - Sending messages to customers of retail bookings The issue is due to a global outage of Cloudflare, an internet infrastructure platform, and is impacting many websites. All other HOPS functions are unaffected.
Update 1332 8 November 2025	ID Cards in 2026 ID CARDS - UK RAILWAYS (Information for railways outside the UK will follow.) Hello, We are now ready to share options for ID cards for UK railways for next year. I'm sorry this is quite late in the year - we have spent so much of the year with other developments in various parts of HOPS that we have only got on to this now. Apologies for the long email, but I hope this answers all questions. Please note there is ACTION REQUIRED, to let us know your views on options 1, 2 and 3. If you don't let us know that you are likely to use one or more of the options then we may not continue to develop/maintain that option! PROBLEM: The cost of producing ID Cards, and particularly the cost of posting them, has risen considerably, such that the system has run at a loss for the last year. We cannot continue to operate the current system at the current costs. It was our intention to introduce changes to the system for 2025, but we did not achieve that, but our consultation leading up to that in 2024 can be viewed here. OPTIONS FOR RAILWAYS FOR 2026: * OPTION 1. Continue using the current, annual stationery, with increased cost. The cost of cards will increase from the current 45p a card to 50p a card. The cost of postage (including envelopes, printing, etc) where cards are sent directly to users will increase from 61p to 91p. The total cost of a card and delivery will therefore rise from the current 1.06 to 1.51. For context, the price of a card has never been changed (45p) since the system was introduced in 2018, seven years ago. The price of postage was 55p in 2018, rising to 61p in 2023. This has massively lagged behind the rising cost of postage, even with the bulk discounts that HOPS obtains. Where cards are sent in batches to railways, we can no longer afford to dispatch those batches for free. As they all are different weights and volumes it isn't possible to set a price for those, but they will be charged at the appropriate postage rate. * OPTION 2. Longer Lasting Cards, with LOWER average cost! As previously discussed (albeit nearly two years ago), an option for a longer-last card, which has been requested by several railways in the past, will be available. Initially the longer-lasting cards will last for three years, but it is envisaged that the next round of cards after that would be valid for ten years. The cards are made from a recycled plastic material that will last for the lifespan of the card. The price for a three-year card will be 2.98 (posted to the user). This is 20p LOWER than the cost of three one-year cards in the current pricing regime. Price is 2.07 per card each when batched to the railway (+ postage). While the CARD would be valid for that long, the user's actual expiry date would be kept in HOPS AND STILL RENEWED EACH YEAR following the same process as at present, eg Department Confirmation and the user confirming their details are up to date (both optional). The manager would progress to issue the user with another year, but nothing would be sent through the post - their expiry date would simply be updated in HOPS. Where cards are used to obtain discounts (eg shops, cafes, and reciprocal railways), the card can be scanned (same as current) to determine its validity. It would a matter for each individual railways to determine how strict they want to be when accepting ID Cards for discounts, and whether they accept cards at face value or scan to confirm. (Note this is no different to, at present, where a user could leave volunteering and have their card cancelled part-way through the year. It just that the tail period of apparent validity would be longer.) ID cards can be scanned using any QR code reader, it doesn't require a specific app. iPhones, for example, can scan QR codes with just their normal camera. For railways that use HOPS POS, we will provide an integrated mechanism for scanning and verifying HOPS cards in POS asap. It is envisaged that if the initial three-year cards work ok then the next round could be ten-year cards (subject to consultation), which would further reduce costs. * OPTION 3. Raildays App The option to display cards in the Raildays app is unchanged and will still be available. The annual price of this will increase from 19p to 21p to reflect the rising cost of maintaining the system. Individual users can choose whether they would like a physical card or a Raildays card. At present the default is Physical and users opt-in to a Raildays card. A new option will be provided for railways to set the default to either Physical or Raildays and users opt-over to the other option. --- To facilitate option 2, and make a distinction between the expiry date of the physical card and the expiry date of the user's validity to work on the railway, some of the terminology in HOPS will be changed. The user's validity to work on the railway will be named 'Authority to Work', and this is what will be renewed each year. The physical card, which might have an expiry date of much later, will be named a 'HOPS Card'. This change of nomenclature will be apparent regardless of which of the above methods is used by each railway/user. The actual processes and functionality of issuing or renewing a card will be unchanged. Railways will be able to decide on a per-person basis which type of card to issue. This was highlighted by a few railways last year that, to avoid the potentially wasted cost of a three-year card to every new volunteer, some of whom are never seen again after their first turn, railways may wish to issue an old-style card for the first year, and then a three-year one at renewal once a volunteer has shown that they are likely to stay for three years to make the card issue worthwhile. Another example raised was seasonal staff, whose contract will end in three months so will definitely be leaving. There will be an option at the Generate stage to pick which type of card to issue. To provide for (most) railways where the same person does both the Generation and Approval of cards, a new 'Generate & Approve' button will be provided if the user has both permissions. --- Future prices. Prices will need to keep better pace with costs. The card prices will be set as above for 2026. We will advise prices for future years, if they are to change, in the autumn of the previous year. The postage prices will need to keep pace with postage costs, so will rise by the same amount as the Royal Mail price does during the year. We will advise when RM prices are published so that everyone knows what the new prices are. --- ACTIONS REQUIRED: Please could railways that make use of the ID card system reply to let us know their views on options 1, 2, and 3. (Thank you to railways that gave their views in 2024, if you could please confirm if your feedback is the same or has changed). Note that if we don't receive any interest at all in one or more of the options above then we may not continue to develop / maintain that option! If anyone has any queries regarding the above please let me know. Thank you Danny Scroggins
Update 1329 4 November 2025	Multi-Factor Authentication MFA is now available to all users in HOPS. Thank you our test guinea pigs for providing useful feedback on this facility. To enable MFA, click the avatar in the top right corner of HOPS and select 'My HOPS Account'. Then scroll down the page to Multi-Factor Authentication, and follow the prompts to set it up. (Note passkeys is not yet available.) For more details, a help page about MFA, with a link to TOTP, is available here: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/mfa (The passkeys page is not yet published so I know that link is dead for the moment.) MFA is not mandatory for any users yet. We have also not promoted it in the general user community. Admins are welcome to make use of it and invite anyone else who they want to to do so. Next steps: We will soon make a permission available that will make MFA mandatory for users with the permission. The permission won't do anything else, we are just using a permission so that all the flexibility of groups and departments etc can be used to allow HOPS Admins to 'set up and forget' which users need MFA as they come and go. Which groups or departments to allocate the permission to will be a matter for individual railways to decide based on what data those groups have access to and the associated risk. Next steps after that: Eventually HOPS will enforce MFA for users with some permissions. The first two are likely to be 015 (permission to administer permissions) and 080 (permission to admin-log-in as a user). Others may follow as cyber-security expectations tighten as time goes on.
Update 1326 2 November 2025	Bank Holidays Bank holidays are highlighted in several parts of HOPS relating to calendars and dates. Options for localisation of Bank/Public Holidays in HOPS has been introduced. A new setting has been added in Calendar Settings to select which nation's holidays required (P480 required). At present the following states have been done: - UK, England & Wales - UK, Scotland - Australia, NSW - Australia, Queensland (not Brisbane area) - Australia, Queensland Brisbane area The lucky residents of Brisbane get an extra public holiday! If admins from other parts of the world would like to provide details of how their bank/public holidays are determined we can add them. (Note a method of determining the bank holidays is required, eg "first Monday after 6 February" etc, not just a list of dates in a particular year.) Enabling this localisation of bank holidays took quite a bit of shuffling around in all the places where bank holidays are shown. We will monitor for any error messages arising as a result and fix asap. Thank you