ORCATS (Operational Research Computerised Allocation of Tickets to Services) is a large centralised

legacy In law, a legacy is something held and transferred to someone as their inheritance, as by will and testament. Personal effects, family property, marriage property or collective property gained by will of real property. Legacy or legacies may refer ...

computer system A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...

used on passenger railways in Great Britain. It is used for real time reservation and revenue sharing on interavailable tickets between

train operating companies A train operating company (TOC) is a business operating passenger trains on the railway system of Great Britain under the collective National Rail brand. TOCs have existed since the privatisation of the network under the Railways Act 1993. The ...

(TOCs). The system is used to divide ticket revenue when a ticket or journey involves trains operated by multiple TOCs. The system was owned by

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four (British ra ...

, and is now managed by the Rail Delivery Group.

History

Before nationalisation, a similar function was carried out by the

Railway Clearing House The Railway Clearing House (RCH) was an organisation set up to manage the allocation of revenue collected by pre-grouping railway companies for the conveyance of passengers and goods over the lines (or using the rolling stock) of other compani ...

References

Centralized computing Information technology organisations based in the United Kingdom Legacy systems Passenger rail transport in the United Kingdom Public transport information systems {{UK-rail-transport-stub