About CRS.Codes

CRS.Codes is a fast, clean station-lookup site that treats Britain’s rail network like a living puzzle box, pulling together CRS codes, TIPLOCs, nearby stations, TOC data, airports and TIGER information into one smooth, searchable interface. It’s built to feel instant, practical, and quietly clever — like a pocket reference that actually keeps up with the real world.

The story of CRS.Codes

CRS.Codes started with a Metro Guard on the South Western Railway getting annoyed at the lack of a tool to easily pull up the departure board info of a particular station. As many good railway projects do, CRS.Codes started with a simple “there must be an easier way to do this.” Digging through multiple sites, PDFs, wikis and reference tables just to answer “what’s the code for this station?” or “what’s the TIPLOC behind this?” was getting in the way of the real work of Guarding a train, and provided ample opportunity for tinkering and play. Following a message to a Driver colleage (it was their day off, don't worry!) who adequately showed off that their employer did have a solution for this... a competing solution formed in this poor Guard's head. An hour later, a working solution was in place working with the data of over 2,585 stations, while the original solution only worked with around 270 stations. Take that, competing solution!

What began as a tiny personal tool to remember a handful of favourite stations and swiftly find departure and platform information quickly grew into a dedicated project: a single, tidy place where CRS codes, TIPLOCs, TOCs, nearby stations, airports and TIGER links could all live together. Along the way it picked up better data, smarter search, and a few quality-of-life touches, until it stopped being a throwaway script and turned into CRS.Codes — a small, opinionated site built by someone who actually uses it every working day.

The goal is simple: make railway reference feel less like archaeology and more like glancing at a well-designed dashboard. If you find it useful, then it’s doing its job. Insert the Michael Scott bowing GIF here. I'm too lazy to make the website support gifs.