VIA Rail Canada stations data

VIA Rail uses its own 4-letter codes for stations, but isn't publishing their data (yet). This aims to provide the missing data for VIA's stations.

Data files

Basic: stations_via.json

A list of VIA's own station data, obtained letter by letter using the http://reservia.viarail.ca/GetStations.aspx?q=<letter> endpoint (used for their reservation portal live search). Each entry looks like:

{
    "sc": "ABBO",
    "pv": "BC",
    "sn": "ABBOTSFORD",
    "dEn": "ABBOTSFORD"
} 

Where:

• sc: Stands for "station code"
• pv: Stands for "province"
• sn: Stands for "station name"
• dEn: Not sure—however it is the same as sn for all entries

Full: stations_via_full.json

Same as stations_via.json plus some extra data fetched for each station by parsing http://www.viarail.ca/en/embedded/station/detail/<station code>, when available. Each entry looks like:

{
    "sc": "ABBO",
    "sn": "ABBOTSFORD",
    "pv": "BC",
    "dEn": "ABBOTSFORD",
    "name": "Abbotsford train station",
    "address": "Hargitt Street, Abbotsford, BC, V3G 1M8, Canada",
    "city": "Abbotsford",
    "lat": "49.116845",
    "long": "-122.277756",
    "url": "http://www.viarail.ca/en/embedded/station/detail/ABBO",
    "timezone": "America/Vancouver"
}

Where:

• name: The long name of the station.
• lat: The latitude of the station, in decimal degrees.
• long: The Longitude of the station, in decimal degrees.
• address: The full address of the station.
• url: The URL to get the full station information.

Notes:

• Any of the above can be an empty string when the information was not available.
• Some of these stations are really obscure and are not passenger stations. Little information is available for these.

Re-generating

pip install -r requirements

To add support for timezones run:

pip install git+https://github.com/pegler/pytzwhere.git

Then:

>>> from via_rail import VIA
>>> VIA().save_stations(filename='stations_via.json')

Or:

>>> VIA().save_stations(filename='stations_via_full.json', full=True)