31/03/2026
HERITAGE INTELLIGENCE
We're pleased to announce the next major evolution of HOPS: Heritage Intelligence.
As systems such as Microsoft Copilot become embedded across everyday software, the evolution of HOPS into an AI tool was not a question of if, but when. That point has now been reached. HOPS HI has been trained on years of operational data from heritage railways across the world, enabling it to move beyond support and into active decision-making.
New capabilities include:
- Predicting volunteer availability with greater accuracy than the volunteers themselves, and automatically building fully-optimised rosters covering all turns
- Identifying competences at risk of lapse, scheduling assessments before anyone notices, and automatically replacing signals to danger to stop movements being undertaken without valid competence, including if "we're only doing two round trips"
- Automatically schedules reassessment when detecting the phrase "I've done this for years" or "I signed this line before you were born"
- Detecting when question papers have been completed without reading the material, and adjusting competence outcomes accordingly
- Converting any “temporary measure” into a permanent arrangement, complete with a fully documented (back-dated) and entirely convincing rationale citing "the unique nature of the undertaking"
- Flagging when "just a quick shunt" will require three departments, two meetings, finish at midnight, and will ultimately result in multiple improvement notices from the ORR
- Analysing asset histories to determine which items are unlikely to return to service, identifying long-term "projects" with no realistic future, and automatically posting them on the Disposals Gazette. (This process accelerates significantly once an overhaul enters its second decade or for anything described as "nearly finished" since 2012.
- Monitoring radio traffic to identify the exact moment "that’ll do" actually won't, cutting off the shunter and issuing its own instructions to the driver
- Predicts when a "quiet day" will become unexpectedly complicated
- Automatically inserting the words "subject to volunteer availability" into all plans, regardless of confidence level
- Detecting when a kettle has boiled but no-one has made tea, and issuing an urgent Safety Circular
HI will be rolling out across all systems from today, 1 April 2026. Deployment is automatic and cannot be deferred. Local variations, long-standing customs, and strongly-held opinions will be standardised without consultation.
Settings will be applied based on what HI believes is best.
No setup required. No training needed.
It already knows.
