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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 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 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 1402 12 February 2026	Tracker Map in POS In readiness for the further rollout of trackers this year, the train locations are now shown on a map in POS. This is designed to assist booking clerks in giving realistic information about train running, especially during late-running. We look forward to developing the tracker system in the coming weeks and months!
Update 1245 17 July 2025	Online Shop ONLINE SHOP We have made some great steps recently towards being able to offer an online shop facility. This will enable 'Stock Items' to be sold by themselves, where it is currently only possible as an upsell at the checkout (add-ons). We previously launched the 'donations' system, which makes use of this because a 'donation' is just a 'stock item' that can be sold. ** IMPORTANT info for railways that already have stock items which are used as add-ons / upsell: There are many new attributes relating to postage costs and delivery mechanisms for products. In order to ensure your upsell products continue to behave as they currently do, these items have been set to: - NOT contribute to any postage costs calculations - NOT require delivery information to be collected [Eg asking the customer whether they would like to have the item posted or collect on arrival, and their delivery address] Therefore the system will continue to be silent on both of these things, as it has been in the past. If you wish to, you can change these settings so that the customer does have the option to collect on arrival or receive by post, and whether they should be charged postage for having it sent. But if you take no action there will be no change. --- In general, railways that are already used to HOPS retail systems are welcome to start preparing settings etc in readiness for products that you already sell via POS to be sold online. [There are also settings if you which specific products to only be available via one mechanism or the other.] Settings for the shop system in general can be found at Tools > Retail Systems > Shop System, or https://www.hops.org.uk/shop_system.php Settings for individual products can be found in Tools > Retail Systems > Shop System > Stock Items List, or https://www.hops.org.uk/shop_system.php?t=2 To help in this preparation process some helpful additional reports have been compiled: Report 135. Products without Names Report 136. Products without Descriptions Report 137. Products without a lead time Report 138. Products with a retail price of zero (free) Report 134. Products without URL Slugs Report 139. Products with a weight of zero (Method A) Report 140. Products with no postage volume limits (Method A) Report 142. Products with no postage group (Method B) Report 141. Products with no postage price (Method D) Report 143. Products that can be purchased when out of stock --- If all the above makes no sense to you at all, but you would like to know more, please contact Steve Morris, who helps railways learn about, deploy and exploit maximum benefit from HOPS Retail Systems at steve.morris@hops.org.uk and he will be happy to answer questions or give a demo. Thank you to everyone from all railways that have worked with HOPS to bring this latest retail development to fruition!
Update 1233 15 July 2025	YouTube Videos | Purchase Orders Update | Disposals | Safety Circular YOUTUBE VIDEOS Most HOPS videos are available again on the new HOPS YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@HOPSHeritageRailways There are videos for users, managers and admins on various topics relating to HOPS, Raildays, Retail Systems, and heritage railway management topics in general. You can subscribe in the normal way to receive notifications when new videos are published. We have nearly completed the uploading of our back catalogue of videos. --- HELP TOPICS We have reviewed and updated our Help page for new users of HOPS: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/new-user We hope this will be useful for Admins to send to new users of the system to explain the first steps. ... And our guidance on managing occurrences of two (or more!) users with the same name at the same railway: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/handling-duplicate-names --- RETAIL SYSTEMS A set of new reports has been added to Reports & Export to assist with auditing products. This will be especially useful to railways preparing their product itinerary ready for online sale. Reports: 135 Products without Names 136 Products without Descriptions 137 Products without a lead time 138 Products with a retail price of zero (free) 134 Products without URL Slugs 139 Products with a weight of zero (Method A) 140 Products with no postage volume limits (Method A) 142 Products with no postage group (Method B) 141 Products with no postage price (Method D) 143 Products that can be purchased when out of stock --- PURCHASE ORDERS The New HOPS purchase orders system will be back soon. When it launched a couple of weeks ago there was a suggestion that permissions were not being applied properly so it was taken offline. It transpired that permissions were working correctly, but there has not yet been the opportunity to re-release it without affecting the smooth-running of the existing system. It was intended that both old and new systems would run side-by-side for a period, until development work on the new system was no longer back-compatible with the old system. This point has now already come and gone, so there will now be a changeover between old and new systems when the time comes. We will give further info when that is about to take place. --- HERITAGE RAILWAY DISPOSALS GAZETTE https://www.hops.org.uk/disposals GNR Double Bolster Wagon No. TIC 1352 The East Anglian Railway Museum is looking to dispose of 1920 built GNR Double Bolster wagon number TIC 1352. The vehicle is thought to have been built by Cravens Railway C&W Co. LTD in Sheffield. The vehicle was previously known to be at the North Yorkshire Moors Railway and the National Railway Museum Shildon. No work has been carried out on the vehicle at Chappel and it’s offered free of charge to parties intended to restore/re-purpose the vehicle with the buyer to remove the vehicle from site at their own cost. Viewings can be arranged. The museum will prioritise any interest from other accredited museums/railways and then heritage/preservation groups/societies. Other interested parties are invited to enquire. If no interest is reached by 9th September the vehicle will be cut up on site. The Heritage Railway Disposals Gazette is available free to all heritage railways. Thank you to all the railways who have worked together to provide this facility for everyone's benefit. If you would like to subscribe directly please visit the Disposals Gazette (link above) and then the 'Subscribe' tab to subscribe. [Note we do not commit to promoting items for disposals via this System Updates system every time, this is a rare occasion to promote its existence. Please subscribe via the disposals link above if you would like to be sure of receiving notifications for new items.] --- "EXCELLENCE" IN RM3 SAFETY CIRCULAR https://www.hops.org.uk/safetycircular It has been a quiet period for Safety Circulars recently. It would be nice to think that that was due to there being no safety lessons to learn, but... perhaps that is wishful thinking. Please do remember the existence of Safety Circular, a good opportunity to show a high level of safety maturity, and RM3 "Excellence", and helping to share lessons learned, both with pain and with pride. Circulars do not have to state the railway from which they originated. ---
Update 1026 1 December 2023	BACKUP RESTORATION DRILLS There will be some brief periods of downtime on Christmas Day, 25 December 2023, between 1200 and 1600 UTC for backup recovery drills. That's four hours commencing from : 1200 UK GMT 1300 Italy CET 1400 South Africa SAST 2000 Western Australia AWST 2130 Australia Northern Territory ACST 2200 Queensland AEST 2230 South Australia ACDT 2300 ACT, NSW, Victoria & Tasmania AEDT This is an important part of HOPS's resilience and data protection assurance processes. Time Register devices will continue to work as normal and transactions will be stored up on devices and uploaded to HOPS when it comes back online. We apologise for any inconvenience.
Update 835 12 January 2022	There will be a period of downtime for maintenance and upgrade work for approximately 60-90 minutes, commencing at 1400 GMT on Monday 17 January. For Australian HOPS, that's Tuesday 18 January at 0001 AEST, 0030 ACDT, 0100 AEDT. Time Register devices will continue to work as normal and transactions will be stored up on devices and uploaded to HOPS when it comes back online. In an emergency only, please contact Danny Scroggins at HOPS HQ via your HOPS Admin. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
Update 232 20 October 2013	'Next Medical Exam Due' list pages have been added. These are in the Community menu for the whole railway (existing permission 144) and in the Departments menu for individual departments (existing permission 140). Thanks to Bo'ness & Kinneil Railway for requesting this.
Update 142 31 July 2012	View and Edit permissions for user's details will be separated down soon. The current ADMIN VIEW permission (91 for the railway and 90 for individual departments) and ADMIN EDIT permission (68 for the railway and 69 for individual departments) will no longer permit access to emergency contact details or medical information. New permissions have been created for these: View Medical details for a specific department: 140 Edit Medical details for a specific department: 142 View Medical details for the whole railway: 144 Edit Medical details for the whole railway: 146 View Emergency Contact details for a specific department: 141 Edit Emergency Contact details for a specific department: 143 View Emergency Contact details for the whole railway: 145 Edit Emergency Contact details for the whole railway: 147 ADMINS: Normally when permissions are altered we edit the system to make sure that service is continuous for those with the affected permissions, however, on this occasion, to ensure we err on the side of caution, we will NOT allocate these permissions to users who already have view/edit access by virtue of the current permissions (68/69/90/91). So, to ensure continuity of service these permissions have been created in the system now, in advance of the change, so that you can add them to the required users in readiness. The permissions have been prefixed 'FUTURE' to make clear that they are not yet in effect. When they come into effect I'll remove the FUTURE prefix.
Update 140 28 July 2012	Railways where the rosters are synchronised across the departments, and hence the availability opens in all departments on the same night, have pointed out that their users who belong to several departments receive several emails, one for each department, saying essentially the same thing. To counter this, if a user belongs to more than one department with availability opening at the same time, both messages will now be combined into the same, single, e-mail. I hope that helps. (Thanks to Sam, KWVR)