HOPS Heritage Railways

20/10/2026

⚠️ HOPS Service Disruption

06:50 - RESOLVED

Access to HOPS and associated services has now been restored.

The disruption followed an overnight infrastructure upgrade, during which the database services did not switch over as expected.

The necessary changes have now been made, and services are operational again.

Some users may experience slightly slower performance for a short period while services settle down.

We apologise for the disruption and thank you for your patience.

Earlier update - INVESTIGATING

We are experiencing a technical issue affecting access to HOPS and associated services, including Raildays, HOPS Australia and client websites.

Our technical team is investigating the issue as a matter of urgency and working to restore services as quickly as possible.

08/10/2026

One account. More connected possibilities.

We're introducing the HOPS Identity Platform, bringing the login process for HOPS and its connected applications together into one central service.

Applications such as Time Register, Point of Sale, Raildays and Online Public Sales will gradually move across, starting with Online Public Sales websites.

For existing users, very little will change. Your current HOPS login details will continue to work, while behind the scenes we're making improvements that will help keep logging in consistent and secure across our applications.

There are some interesting possibilities for the future, too. The new platform could eventually allow organisations to let people sign in to other compatible systems with their HOPS account, such as an intranet, CCTV system or WiFi portal, without needing separate login details.

It's part of our continued investment in HOPS and the services we provide to the heritage sector.

If your organisation has a system that could benefit from using HOPS for authentication, we'd be interested to hear from you.

Read more: https://api.hops.org.uk/update/1520

10/09/2026

⚠️ Roster Issues

17:01 - RESOLVED

This issue has now been fixed and published department rosters are available as normal. Thank you for your patience.

16:23 - UPDATE

This is affecting staff who don't have permission to view unpublished rosters.

Users can still view their own roster and see the turns they're rostered to work here:

https://www.hops.org.uk/user_roster.php

We're working on a fix and will update you once it's resolved.

16:02

Some users may currently be experiencing difficulty viewing published department rosters in HOPS.

We're aware of the issue and are working on a fix.

HOPS is an online management system for heritage railways. Virtually all aspects of railway data processing and ancilliary administration are within the ultimate scope of HOPS.

06/09/2026

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

01/09/2026

Some pages and functions in the Asset Management System, and particularly the defects pages, are undergoing renewal.

There should be no change to functionality, but if you find any issues please let us know via your HOPS Admin. HOPS Admins please report via the Helpdesk.

Thank you.

22/08/2026

Some Help pages relating to rosters have been reviewed and updated recently and some new pages added:

Rosters Overview: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/rosters-overview

Roster Settings: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/roster-settings-turns

Roster Preparation: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/base-roster-preparation

Turn Periods: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/availability-periods

Adding Turns: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/adding-turns

Editing Turns: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/amending-turns

Also, to answer a common question, a new page for 'How to locate your ID card in the Raildays app' has been added: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/id-card-raildays

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All HOPS Help pages can be found at https://www.hops.org.uk/help or via the Question Mark icon in the top right corner of HOPS, and then 'Help Topics'.

17/08/2026

This is a reminder that you can subscribe to email notifications whenever a System Update is posted.

https://www.hops.org.uk/updates

You can subscribe and unsubscribe whenever you like on the System > System Updates page or via the Link above.

Thank you

08/08/2026

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.

Thank you

22/07/2026

https://www.orr.gov.uk/search-news/young-volunteers-supported-play-their-part-heritage-railways-following-new-safety-guidance

The Office of Rail and Road has today published guidance designed to help heritage railway and tramway operators give young volunteers, aged from 14 to minimum school leaving age, the chance to learn new skills while making sure the right safeguards are in place.

22/06/2026

For any retail railways wishing to contact customers visiting in the next few days:

- there are email and SMS options to contact event customers on the session bookings pages

- there are email and SMS options to contact travel customers on the calendar date pages, travel bookings tab.

If emailing, remember to BCC!

Thank you.