On 4 September and 11 September there will be Elizabeth line test trains running between Stratford and West Ealing in preparation for the next stage of the EL. These trains will be included in National Rail data so that the customer info screens can be fully tested, and therefore they will be present in the open data. There will be an alert next to each train to inform customers that the service isn’t for passengers.
If possible, please hide these trains in any customer facing apps as customers won’t be able to board the trains.
The test trains for 4 Sep will appear in the data from tomorrow (3 Sep) and the test trains for 11 Sep will also appear the day before (10 Sep).
Appreciate this is short notice for this weekend, anything you are able to do for tomorrow or next weekend is much appreciated.
Timetable for the test trains (same timetable for both days):
The team have confirmed the trains will be fully visible with no indication they aren’t in passenger service. They weren’t able to comment on the code specifically but I assume the code won’t be any different from typical trains. Perhaps typical test trains don’t need to appear on customer info screens? These ones do so might be different to typical test trains. Hope that helps a bit at least.
The whole point of the test, as @jwithers said in the first message, is to test the customer information screens. Running the trains as empty stock moves or marking them as non-stopping trains defeats the whole purpose, because then they won’t actually show up on the CIS screens.
They are testing customer information, not the signalling or the trains themselves, so no, they should be running as passenger 9*** trains as if they are in service (the advertised trains spreadsheet that jwithers shared also confirms this).