UK rail accident investigation reports

At a glance

Publisher

Rail Accident Investigation Branch · homepage

Category

Transport & logistics

Jurisdiction

United Kingdom

Publisher updates

Several times a month

SourceFinch checks

Daily by default

Records per run

50 in the latest run

Record key

id

Acquired from

Publisher's public API: https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports.atom

Recipe

v1.0.0, approved October 12, 2026

Verified since

October 12, 2026

Last green run

October 12, 2026

What the data contains

The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) is the UK's independent investigator of accidents and incidents on railways and tramways. It publishes investigation reports, interim reports, discontinuation reports and safety digests on GOV.UK, which provides the collection as an Atom feed of the 50 most recently published or updated documents. This source reads the feed daily and makes one record per document, keyed by its feed identifier, with the title (report number and what happened), link, last-updated time and GOV.UK's summary, which gives the place and date of the occurrence. A monitor reports each new report and each update. Report texts are not fetched; titles and summaries describe locations and events, not the people involved. An entry leaving the 50-document window is not a withdrawal. SourceFinch is independent of the RAIB.

Fields and types

Every record has these fields. The key field id identifies a record across runs, so changes are reported field by field.

Sample output

The first 5 of 50 records from SourceFinch's own run on October 12, 2026, exactly as delivered.

[
  {
    "id": "tag:www.gov.uk,2005:/raib-reports/report-11-slash-2026-unsafe-movement-of-locomotives-being-coupled-on-the-bluebell-railway",
    "url": "https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/report-11-slash-2026-unsafe-movement-of-locomotives-being-coupled-on-the-bluebell-railway",
    "title": "Report 11/2026: Unsafe movement of locomotives being coupled on the Bluebell Railway",
    "summary": "Unsafe movement of locomotives being coupled on the Bluebell Railway, East Sussex, 9 August 2025.",
    "updated_at": "2026-10-08T11:01:41+01:00"
  },
  {
    "id": "tag:www.gov.uk,2005:/raib-reports/interim-report-01-slash-2026-collision-between-passenger-trains-near-elstow",
    "url": "https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/interim-report-01-slash-2026-collision-between-passenger-trains-near-elstow",
    "title": "Interim report 01/2026: Collision between passenger trains near Elstow",
    "summary": "Collision between passenger trains near Elstow, Bedfordshire, 19 June 2026.",
    "updated_at": "2026-10-01T10:00:13+01:00"
  },
  {
    "id": "tag:www.gov.uk,2005:/raib-reports/safety-digest-06-slash-2026-queens-park",
    "url": "https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/safety-digest-06-slash-2026-queens-park",
    "title": "Safety digest 06/2026: Queens Park",
    "summary": "Collision between a passenger train and rail handling trolleys at Queens Park, 9 May 2026.",
    "updated_at": "2026-09-03T09:59:37+01:00"
  },
  {
    "id": "tag:www.gov.uk,2005:/raib-reports/report-10-slash-2026-collision-between-a-tram-and-two-pedestrians-at-staniforth-road",
    "url": "https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/report-10-slash-2026-collision-between-a-tram-and-two-pedestrians-at-staniforth-road",
    "title": "Report 10/2026: Collision between a tram and two pedestrians at Staniforth Road",
    "summary": "Collision between a tram and two pedestrians at Staniforth Road, Sheffield, 22 June 2025.",
    "updated_at": "2026-07-28T10:00:09+01:00"
  },
  {
    "id": "tag:www.gov.uk,2005:/raib-reports/discontinuation-report-01-slash-2026-derailment-of-a-tram-at-piccadilly-tram-stop-manchester",
    "url": "https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/discontinuation-report-01-slash-2026-derailment-of-a-tram-at-piccadilly-tram-stop-manchester",
    "title": "Discontinuation report 01/2026: Derailment of a tram at Piccadilly tram stop, Manchester",
    "summary": "Derailment of a tram at Piccadilly tram stop, Manchester, 5 April 2026",
    "updated_at": "2026-07-27T11:55:47+01:00"
  }
]

Evidence behind every value

• Each run keeps the publisher's exact response, hashed with SHA-256. This sample came from a response with hash 25252aa209da36c20865c39a57f391e6a599d555a5447f948766a752c47704b3.
• Every value records where it came from in that response: a CSS path into the retained capture.
• Each run gets a signed manifest (Ed25519) timestamped by an RFC 3161 authority: this run's manifest hash is ecb0e718399e6aee1b96d7d04da2c26658f40b41d77d13c9c8b4eacd012cf3fe, timestamped October 12, 2026.
• The compliance state at capture is recorded with the evidence: robots.txt hash and verdict, AI-preference signals, crawler identity and the usage rights below.
• Download any run as an evidence bundle (WACZ) and check it offline, without trusting SourceFinch: sourcefinch verify-bundle run.wacz.

Terms posture and usage rights

GOV.UK's terms state that its content, including feeds made available for other websites and applications, is published under the Open Government Licence v3.0 unless otherwise stated, which permits copying, publishing, adapting and commercial use with attribution. Personal data and third-party rights are outside that licence; this source reads only feed metadata (identifiers, titles, links, revision times and summaries) for Rail Accident Investigation Branch documents and never fetches linked pages. www.gov.uk/robots.txt allows the feed path.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: Rail Accident Investigation Branch. SourceFinch is independent of the publisher.

Usage rights travel with every record SourceFinch delivers (API, exports, webhooks and evidence bundles). They are our documented understanding of the publisher's stated terms, not legal advice.

Reliability

Runs, last 30 days

1

Green

100%

Failed

0

Median run time

0.7 s

Latest run

success, October 12, 2026

Measured on completed runs of this recipe version across SourceFinch, anonymized, within a rolling 30-day window. First successful observation: October 12, 2026. A new recipe has only the history collected since that date; this is not a 30-day uptime guarantee.

Use it

Every surface creates the same monitor from this Verified recipe. Monitors keep record history, report field-level changes and deliver by webhook, export or email. You confirm you have the right to collect the source (rights: true).

{
  "schema": "sourcefinch/source@1",
  "name": "UK rail accident investigation reports",
  "url": "https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports.atom",
  "recipe": {
    "mode": "http",
    "format": "xml",
    "items": "entry",
    "fields": {
      "id": "id",
      "url": "link[rel=\"alternate\"]@href",
      "title": "title",
      "summary": "summary",
      "updated_at": "updated"
    },
    "required": [
      "id",
      "title",
      "url",
      "updated_at"
    ],
    "types": {
      "updated_at": "datetime"
    }
  },
  "schedule": "daily",
  "key_field": "id"
}

{
  "name": "UK rail accident investigation reports",
  "url": "https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports.atom",
  "recipe": {
    "mode": "http",
    "format": "xml",
    "items": "entry",
    "fields": {
      "id": "id",
      "url": "link[rel=\"alternate\"]@href",
      "title": "title",
      "summary": "summary",
      "updated_at": "updated"
    },
    "required": [
      "id",
      "title",
      "url",
      "updated_at"
    ],
    "types": {
      "updated_at": "datetime"
    }
  },
  "key_field": "id",
  "schedule": "daily",
  "rights": true,
  "catalog": {
    "slug": "govuk-raib-reports",
    "version_id": "29a43991-cc99-4393-a8ca-078f3ac29961"
  }
}

# the Verified entry (fields, recipe, sample, terms) as JSON
curl https://sourcefinch.com/v1/catalog/govuk-raib-reports -H "Authorization: Bearer $SOURCEFINCH_API_KEY"

# create the monitor from source.json (below)
curl -X POST https://sourcefinch.com/v1/sources \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SOURCEFINCH_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: $(uuidgen)" \
  -d @source.json

# then run it now (later runs follow the schedule)
curl -X POST https://sourcefinch.com/v1/sources/$SOURCE_ID/runs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SOURCEFINCH_API_KEY" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: $(uuidgen)"

sourcefinch login
sourcefinch catalog get govuk-raib-reports --source-json > source.json
sourcefinch sources create --file source.json
sourcefinch runs create $SOURCE_ID --wait
sourcefinch records $SOURCE_ID

import { SourceFinch } from "@sourcefinch/sdk";

const sf = new SourceFinch({ apiKey: process.env.SOURCEFINCH_API_KEY });
const entry = await sf.catalog.get("govuk-raib-reports");
const source = await sf.sources.create({
  catalog: { slug: entry.slug, version_id: entry.recipe.version_id },
  name: entry.name.slice(0, 100),
  url: entry.acquisition_path.endpoint,
  recipe: entry.recipe.definition,
  key_field: entry.recipe.key_field,
  schedule: entry.recipe.schedule,
  rights: true, // you confirm you have the right to collect this source
});
const run = await sf.runs.wait((await sf.runs.create(source.id)).id);
console.log(run.status);

claude mcp add --transport http sourcefinch https://sourcefinch.com/mcp

# then ask your agent:
"Use SourceFinch to monitor UK rail accident investigation reports: get_catalog_source govuk-raib-reports,
then create_source with its create_source_args (dry run first), then run_source."

Pricing

Each check is one run, whatever the number of records, and failed runs are free. On its default daily schedule this source uses about 30 runs a month, which fits the Free plan's 300 runs. It uses HTTP acquisition, so no browser runs are needed. See plans.

Guides using this source

• Track UK air, rail and marine accident investigation reports

All guides

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