It's fun to watch it side-by-side with https://www.youtube.com/@RailcamUKLive
Very nice! I’m making one for NYC subway. It’s still in-progress and animations need a lot more work. Next steps was to adjust the size and overlay it on a proper map.
Switzerland's real-time map of trains and public transport (zoom in on a city to view its public transport in real time). You can find boats too.
And if you check on/off the other options, you get way more informations.
https://maps.trafimage.ch/ch.sbb.netzkarte?lang=en&baselayer...
Would be better if it had some technical explanation rather than just yet another public transport map. This:
https://vgcgroup.co.uk/news/signalbox-for-train-locations/
suggests the data mostly comes from railway signalling information, plus a bit of "AI" in some way. I wonder how far apart railway signals usually are, or what the AI is trained on, or anything really vs just looking at a map.
> I wonder how far apart railway signals usually are
It varies substantially across the network, dependent on the mode of operation of the signalling, the desired headway, the maximum operating speed, the service braking distance of the rolling stock at line speed, factors in the layout that might influence safety (e.g. junctions), the number of colour lights used on signal heads (i.e. 2, 3 or 4 colour lights), signal sighting distance, whether signal visibility might be affected by sun glare, etc. And of course this assumes that the area is actually using line-side signals – most of the network does, but there's notable exceptions using in-cab signalling or computer-based train control.
> suggests the data mostly comes from railway signalling information, plus a bit of "AI" in some way
I'm in no way affiliated with the website, but in areas that follow track circuit block principles (much of the heavily-used main GB railway network, excluding many more lightly-used outlying lines), the "signalling information" that article indicates the site derives from is almost certainly Network Rail's Train Describer (TD) feed. This feed reports the headcodes for signalling berths across the layout. The signalling system will normally step headcodes automatically as the train activates successive track circuits or operates axle counters in the track.
The Train Describer can only report headcodes in berths, and berths might be quite long! It certainly doesn't provide second-by-second train progress, so this site's mapping engine is likely doing some proprietary interpolation to make the train position indicators appear to "move" in real time to give the illusion of trains making progress. (Whatever the inputs to their algorithm/model are, their calling it "AI" loses all technical specificity.) This interpolation may be based on line speed, perhaps the observed average time a headcode normally remains in a given berth, allowing them to derive a typical 'average speed' for that berth or section.
If it was me designing this, I'd expect a mixture of the train class, the rolling stock and line speed to give a good estimator of the train's current position in block. You then have to make a product decision to decide what to do if you miscalculated train position – do you make staccato jumps of the train position indicators on the map if you got it wrong, or do you somehow try to smooth your error out over another period to avoid indicators suddenly moving?
In other areas of the country, train position may be reported by GPS on equipped units, or in some areas, the passage of trains is dependent on manual reports by the signaller, so the map may not have much real-time data to infer train position from. I find it highly unlikely that they're deriving much accurate data in real time from smartphone apps, but it could be a (noisy, incomplete) set of inputs to improve their model of how trains typically make progress through particular berths.
Checkout the French equivalent : https://carto.tchoo.net. Looks more complete.
Past similar HN submission got no attention, whereas the UK's top page. Interesting !
Note that carto.tchoo does not provide real position in real-time: it only has access to departures, stops, delays and suppressions and interpolate position based on this.
This means that if your train is running at half-speed or stopped but does not result in an official delay, the position will not match reality.
The title matters a lot. Without "real-time" this submission has likely gotten the same lack of attention.
Is the interesting part the upvotes, meaning there's more people interested in UK train networks than French ones ? And it's a comment on demographics ?
Or is the interesting part that the UK one is real-time, and the French one isn't (or at least, zooming in, I don't see them moving).
And to see the status (Ile-de-France only): https://ratpstatus.fr/trains.html
That's no surprise. The French equivalent of anything rail related is always more complete than the UK.
> Signalbox's technology identifies the train a device is on by matching a snapshot of smartphone data to a train’s trajectory data. The technology uses advanced algorithms works even with severely degraded data. We are able to pinpoint a smartphone to any type of train without background location tracking or hardware.
Hmm, that's...interesting?
Seems similar to Transit's approach: https://blog.transitapp.com/go-underground/
Meanwhile, other engineers are working on reducing the vibrations.
I wonder what app has allow location on all the time and is feeding them their data
"Acquired by Trainline in 2023, Signalbox works with organisations across the rail ecosystem to improve customer information and operational awareness."
https://www.signalbox.io/news/southeastern-launches-track-my...
So, we don't know if this is the case, but one way to do this is not to ask the phones but the cells. The mobile network has to know where the phones are by cell; the cells are often small relative to the speed of the train; there are also cells installed specifically to improve service on trains, or provide a base station to the train wifi, or for communications to railway staff.
If you get a bunch of phones switching cell near simultaneously, you can tell that a train movement across the cell boundary has probably happened. Then correlate that with the other data feed about train blocks, and bob's your uncle.
Only about 50% of trains have wifi: https://www.businesstravelnewseurope.com/Ground-Transport/UK... ; but it's easy to imagine getting the mobile hotspot on the train to share its GPS location as well.
Few questions, wonder if anyone knows the answers:
1. So it's Trainline on a persons phone that is tracking this info and using it to enrich this service? I use Trainline and didn't know it was doing that, but I do have location permissions on because I was told that powered the search picker when I started using the app.
2. What did they use _before_ Trainline? Or was Trainline selling user location data to them?
wait - so you think that the map is made up of people who are all sitting on that website using the Find My Train demo?
I think you are missing the point - what is collecting data on all those trains.
Dutch (and Dutch-bound) rail network overview: https://treinposities.nl/ And the equivalent for buses: https://busposities.nl/ Not all of them have GPS trackers, so some positions are guessed.
There's functionality for this in the official Dutch Railways app, but it looks like they didn't bother putting that onto their website. There is a common source of open data for most of these details, but I don't find the docs to be very complete.
Wow! https://treinposities.nl/ even shows historical positions since 2019. Feels like something you'd only see in a cheesy murder mystery.
Real-time position of Prague trams including filtering just air-conditioned ones or certain production type, try mobile app Tramdex.
There's one for the Czech network (one of the densest in the world, if not the densest) https://grapp.spravazeleznic.cz
And obligatory one for Slovakia with much better UX.
https://mapa.zsr.sk/index.aspx
And Polish one, still a gen or two behind just like their rail network. It needs to be said they are investing heavily to bring it up to scratch.
It would be amazing if someone could visualize this data in Railroad Tycoon or Transport Tycoon game engine.
Someone's already done the UK as an OpenTTD map: https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Community/Scenarios/United%20Kin... , although I suspect that one cell =~ 100m makes it hard to accurately represent the real train density.
Bit puzzled by some of the station data. This train:
https://www.map.signalbox.io/?train=202607066710114&location...
is a train from Cambridge to Kings Cross - and in the side panel it shows it as calling at the new Cambridge South station. But Cambridge South isn't shown on the map. That's kinda understandable (because it opened a week ago), but Cambridge North (which opened in 2017) also isn't shown on the map. Neither are offered in any of the auto-complete dropdowns?
I'm wondering if the station data a static dataset which hasn't been updated in a long time?
It's probably a static feed, and they've probably had to do some lifting to define the layout and map that to the raw data they get from Network Rail, and they've probably not updated it for newly opened stations. There is a station near me that's been open for many years that isn't shown there either.
There are many different alphabet-soup coding systems used across Network Rail, retailing systems, and the wider railway industry to identify locations on the network. Station names will often be different in different databases; look at any station with an apostrophe in and you'll find it inconsistently named in different places.
This only seems to be standard overground trains. If you add in metro networks like the London tube, or light rail / trams like in Manchester, then you’d get at least hundreds more.
The map includes metros across the Tyne and Wear Metro in NE England, and while its not perfect, it's by far the most useful train live tracking I've ever seen. There's quite a few places in the UK with different rail systems that don't fit together (and have apps of varying quality/usefulness)
Tokyo equivalent with animated trains, weather, flights and more: https://minitokyo3d.com/
Here is the map made by the Swedish transport authority: https://www.trafikverket.se/trafikinformation/tagkarta/
I can tell it's not accurate because it has half the trains marked as on time.
Reality is far more depressing. You'd also need to add ghostly white for cancelled and bus icons for replacement buses. Why do I live here god. Why can't we have a functional train network like literally any other civilised country.
More than half of British trains do run exactly on time (within the scheduled minute). It's quite high — over 65%. Over 85% arrive within three.
It's a bit massaged in some cases e.g. Transpennine, who have only recently been forced to stop abusing P-coding to pre-cancel trains that would have been significantly delayed. So I think those figures may take a dip.
But re: civilised countries: Germany's rail service is effectively significantly less punctual than ours; regional services are OK, about as good as ours, but if you need a longer haul service for any part of your journey you will have a very much worse experience. France is a bit more punctual on long-haul, I think; they average better within-the-minute punctuality on TGV, but regionally it is not better than the UK, it is worse. Italy (in some senses the most civilised country on earth) has poor train reliability.
Delays on UK networks are in many case due to very fundamental, long term issues that are hard to resolve. Rural lines that are single-track for geographic reasons, for example — where it's a choice of either single track or no train. And there are some absolutely pathological problems like the Borough Market Junction, which has been a cause of severe structural delays for about 140 years, in part because the only way to solve it is to destroy historic parts of London.
I personally do not think delays are the biggest problem in UK rail; ticket prices are. The slow return of train services to various forms of public ownership may help there, but we need the ROSCOs too. We need to stop what privatisation did. Perhaps we will.
Shameless self-promotion: I make a departure board for the Swiss public transportation network: https://www.stationdisplay.com/
I suggest you adjust your search results based on population. If I search for 'Luzern' it suggests 'Eschenbach'.
Indian equivalent: https://railradar.in/railradar
I had to press the Back button a LOT of times to get back to HN!
Boston: https://tmap.live.
London: https://londonunderground.live
this reminds me of the London specific equivalent posted awhile back: https://londonunderground.live (previously discussed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43651390).
Estonian equivalent: https://elron.ee/#trainmap
Hungary https://vonatinfo.mav.hu/
I would love to see this for Germany :D
Basically all of Europe, with varying levels of detail.
Here's the Danish one (with some trains in Sweden): http://landetspuls.dk
Tokyo: https://minitokyo3d.com
Off-topic, I don't get why people still use a www subdomain, especially so in this case, www.map. Conway's Law in action?
why dont you get it? i dont' get why you dont get it.
very cool. Unrelated but anytime im looking at a map be it city roads, rails subway, etc i wish there was a way to filter the layers based on construction date.
I would like to be able to see when each road/section was built. I assume with GoogleEarth and other databases it should be possible to run some kind changelog comparison and do this at scale for at least the last 20 years or so.
Used this many times during the longer commutes across country, works well.
Topping out at 10 minutes delay for the most severe marker colour is an interesting choice.
It would be better if they were aligned to the delay repay thresholds.
IIRC 10 minutes is the minimum threshold for a train to be officially considered as delayed.
Certainly would not work out in Germany LOL
It's amazing how easily you can tell when you cross the border from OBB to DB ;-)
Is this actually based on GPS (or similar) on the trains, or is it just interpolating signal times (which are waaaay coarser)?
Not affiliated with the site, but it's almost certainly just the Train Describer feed from Network Rail to observe headcodes stepping through berths, and then doing some proprietary interpolation within berths to guess where the trains are, probably using fairly coarse inputs like train class, rolling stock type and line speed. It's possible it's not even doing that, and they have just built a model that observes typical passage times between berths and they average that out.
TRUST (reporting system that describes train movements as they've happened) does accept updates by means other than the Train Describer, which might include GPS if the unit is equipped, and in many areas is dependent on signallers making manual reports (which may not be made immediately). They might also use TRUST as a data source, especially in non-Track Circuit Block areas. The rate of GPS updates is not going to be anywhere near as frequent as those train position indicators that appear to move here in "real time" across the map, so however they combine data sources, their site is trying to be clever in guessing train location.
It goes without saying: this sort of map is highly likely to be wildly inaccurate and isn't useful for anything safety-critical.
Would be cool if these could animate/interpolate to their next position
they do?
A couple of obvious observations: * Does not include Northern Ireland or the Isle of Man, both of which have notable rail networks (as they are not in GB). * Does not include heritage railways. There are a number of other railways on here which are not marked but offer tourist travel.
I remember my colleague from MFF UK, Robert Babilon, producing his first real-time map of Czech trains in 2004.
The page, called Babitron, still exists and still keeps that delightful 2004 look. I visited it a few days ago. Unfortunately today there is a message "We are moving Babitron to a different server", so the link isn't working.
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I live next to a railway line so I'm in the (not particularly unique, and definitely not enviable) position to compare what's on the map to "IRL" trains, and I can tell you it's as good as useless.
- Trains appearing on the map that aren't anywhere to be seen on the tracks.
- Trains on the tracks that don't appear on the map.
- Trains moving away from the station that according to the timetable view shouldn't have left the station yet.
- Trains on the map seemingly stopping and changing direction, only to reverse course once again.
As for realtime - even if the data was accurate and timely, a 2Hz refresh rate most definitely isn't realtime.
Sorry if it seems like I'm shitting on it - it's a fun toy, but I wouldn't depend on it for anything important.
There's no way its input data is anywhere near adequate for the rate the position indicators refresh, so it's taking some base data and then just... guessing the rest.
>it's a fun toy, but I wouldn't depend on it for anything important.
This could be said for the rail network as a whole.
Neglect and underinvestment over the last 60+ years has left it in a sorry state, and debacles such as HS2 show how government has no ability to deliver proper material upgrades to the ageing infrastructure and service. The direction of travel (scuse the pun) has been clear since the Beeching cuts: roads are the priority. Add to that Neoliberal divestment policies and we end up where we are today: overcrowded, filthy, ugly trains barely fit for cattle transport and chronically understaffed stations and train crews. Not to mention the extortionate prices for a ticket to travel on the network.
I adore rail travel, but dread the necessity of using it any time I go on a journey.
Perhaps I’m going mad based off the praise heaped in other responses, but - something seems wildly off with the locations?
I just witnessed a London Liverpool street service plough through the M25 motorway - about 40 miles south of it's typical route and 5 miles south of the nearest actual railway. Dozens of the trains seem to be traversing through the English channel/La Manche towards the north sea.
In fact the number of trains actually tracking a rail line (and this is outside of the cities where the tube/metro might obscure this) seems in the minority. Most seem to be going straight through the middle of farmers fields on some obscure course unrelated to theirs.
Would be useful if they add real time cop location information so you can avoid getting arrested for the crime of being white while being assulted.
Cop? what? Also there's British Transport Police.
This map is for the UK, not the US. We don't have ICE here.
No, that's Deutsche Bahn.
(probably an inappropriate place for a joke, but at least it's about trains)
Most of the UK. Northern Ireland's network is not included.
Quite right, "UK" is an abbreviation for "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"
It's a reference to the murder of Henry Nowak, a sad example of knife crime which exists in the uk, and of individual police officers who failed to render basic first aid.
The family not only lost their son, but then had to see his name used to further the global hatred of the farage types
What's that got to do with "arresting people for the crime of being white"?
That's a pretty common racist dogwhistle, propagated by groups like Farage's Russian owner.
I suspect it's linked to this which is the latest example being used.
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/uk-man-was-assaulted-by-atta...
This feels like a weird takeway to take from this!
Out of curiousity, where are you from? I find it interesting where only people who get so exercised about the UK get their info from...
OP shares dailymail.co.uk links. I think they're probably not located in the UK, but a bot account.