Gaelan's train checker

[Gaelan]

Decided I wasn't happy with any of the existing tools* for checking train departures, so I threw together https://trains.gaelan.me over the weekend.

It's still very much a work in progress (notably missing features include arrivals, filtering by destination, and trains more than 2 hours in the future), but I think it's reached the point where it's good enough to be useful. Feedback very much appreciated!

Notable features:

• Simple, fast, no ads
• On desktop (or any sufficiently wide screen), a two-panel view showing the overall departure board as well as detail for one service
• Click a stop to view connections from there (a la BRtimes, but realtime!)

*except on iOS, where Railboard is absolutely fantastic

 

[TommyJ]

This looks really promising. Nice one.
Be great to be able to go to earlier departures like Railboard.

 

[Gaelan]

Be great to be able to go to earlier departures like Railboard.

Yes, that's on the list. Past 2 hours will be pretty easy to show, more than that will require some significant effort.

(In technical terms: currently this uses the LDBWS, via Huxley; but that only supports a time offset of 2 hours in either direction. To display more, I believe I'll have to consume the Darwin Push Port directly, which is more technically complex.)

 

[TommyJ]

Yes, that's on the list. Past 2 hours will be pretty easy to show, more than that will require some significant effort.

(In technical terms: currently this uses the LDBWS, via Huxley; but that only supports a time offset of 2 hours in either direction. To display more, I believe I'll have to consume the Darwin Push Port directly, which is more technically complex.)

Even two hours back would be a great feature.

 

[L401CJF]

Had a quick nosey, does the job nicely! Will be using it often!

 

[Bantamzen]

That's a nice, clean site and renders well on my mobile too. Good work.

 

[Halwynd]

That's excellent - nice clear interface, fast and simple. More than the next two hours would be a bonus, but understand the complexities mentioned above.

Thank you Gaelan, an instant favourite on both desktop and iOS for me.

 

[Mal75756]

Really like how easy it is to view, great work and one i will use when out an about as it connects to RTT and shows the numbers. Thanks

 

[Rescars]

Seems simple, straightforward and useful. Works well on my android phone and tablet. Thank you

 

[Seanesheep]

I used to love Tiger but it doesn't show my local stations anymore. An alternative I found was quite good but doesn't show any replacement buses.
I've been having a play with this and, so far, it seems quite good. Thanks.

 

[Sultan]

Ooh, I'll try this one later. Railboard is the best I've found since ByTrain stopped this year (shame as it was a really simple, well thought-out interface).

 

[Gaelan]

since ByTrain stopped this year (shame as it was a really simple, well thought-out interface).

Aw, shame I'm just hearing about it now. Twitter profile gives a location of St Andrews too, reasonable chance I've met whoever was behind it!

 

[mike57]

Just tried it as my wife is meeting my nephew off the train around now. Very quick and simple display, one click, enter BEM and all the information I need is displayed. Another click and I can see progress (or lack of it...) Just tried it on my phone as well. Try getting that info quickly off the Northern app.

I like the uncluttered interface, a nice clear easy read for 66yo eyes. It renders well on a phone screen and a computer monitor.

 

[Turtle]

That's a nice, clean site and renders well on my mobile too. Good work.

Same here. Clear and uncluttered.

 

[GreatWesterner]

Looks great - perhaps add an indicator for a delayed service / if a Darwin message is present

 

[HOOVER29]

Decided I wasn't happy with any of the existing tools* for checking train departures, so I threw together https://trains.gaelan.me over the weekend.

It's still very much a work in progress (notably missing features include arrivals, filtering by destination, and trains more than 2 hours in the future), but I think it's reached the point where it's good enough to be useful. Feedback very much appreciated!

Notable features:

• Simple, fast, no ads
• On desktop (or any sufficiently wide screen), a two-panel view showing the overall departure board as well as detail for one service
• Click a stop to view connections from there (a la BRtimes, but realtime!)

*except on iOS, where Railboard is absolutely fantastic

In my favourites already.
Very useful

 

[Fadacious]

This is awesome! I'll give it a proper try on my next trip. Eager to see how responsive it is in places with poo mobile signals

 

[hux385]

This is really neat! Very simple and clear. I look forward to full functionality of arrivals etc. being added

 

[kacper]

Thank you, works very quickly and easily

 

[Rambler2978]

In my favourites already.
Very useful

Sorry but I cannot see why there is all this hype about this site. All it does, so far as I can see is to list the station names in alphabetical order followed by the 3 character station code, e.g Liverpool LIV.

If you are in the middle of a journey, it does not help you to know the station code of the next stop.

Apologies in advance if I am missing something fundamental!

 

[Gaelan]

Sorry but I cannot see why there is all this hype about this site. All it does, so far as I can see is to list the station names in alphabetical order followed by the 3 character station code, e.g Liverpool LIV.

If you are in the middle of a journey, it does not help you to know the station code of the next stop.

Apologies in advance if I am missing something fundamental!

Ah, sorry that's not particularly clear - that's just the station selection page, click a station on that list (there's a search box at the top; you can also just type a station name/code and hit enter) to view departures from said station.

 

[emsworth]

Fantastic work. It's always great to see new tools that enhance our daily routines. Thanks for sharing this with the community! Looking forward to seeing how it evolves with future updates.

 

[kacper]

Was surprised to see this too!

 

[Robski_]

Decided I wasn't happy with any of the existing tools* for checking train departures

Sorry to hear that. As a developer of an existing tool, not many people leave constructive feedback - in my experience it's either overwhelmingly positive or uninstall with no explanation, so it's difficult to gauge what people want (except less adverts/make everything free - but servers aren't free).

I threw together https://trains.gaelan.me over the weekend.

It's still very much a work in progress (notably missing features include arrivals, filtering by destination, and trains more than 2 hours in the future), but I think it's reached the point where it's good enough to be useful. Feedback very much appreciated!

Notable features:

• Simple, fast, no ads
• On desktop (or any sufficiently wide screen), a two-panel view showing the overall departure board as well as detail for one service
• Click a stop to view connections from there (a la BRtimes, but realtime!)

A few (minor) observations:

• Where a train is indefinitely delayed, it should also apply to the last location for that train - e.g. 2C34 13:57 London Kings Cross to Cambridge was delayed indefinitely for all stops from Alexandria Palace onwards, but your website was showing an on time arrival at Cambridge (see attached image #1).
• Services with additional stops added in don't have estimated/actual times shown at certain locations (see attached image #2 for Balcombe).
• Maybe not a concern for now, but consider implementing a mechanism to avoid hitting the rate limit for LDB - 5,000 requests per hour - especially given that your website essentially polls the API every minute.

Having said that, it is simple and it does get the job done. The biggest positive about open data is that everyone is able to make their own versions/interpretations of the data available (within the bounds of the NRE open data license, of course).

 

[Gaelan]

Sorry to hear that. As a developer of an existing tool, not many people leave constructive feedback - in my experience it's either overwhelmingly positive or uninstall with no explanation, so it's difficult to gauge what people want (except less adverts/make everything free - but servers aren't free).

RailChecker is one of the better ones! But on iOS, I don't find it quite as polished as Railboard, and - although I'm aware this is rather irrational - I was more prepared to throw together a website than pony up the £2/month for the desktop version!

And thanks for the detailed bug reports!

A few (minor) observations:

• Where a train is indefinitely delayed, it should also apply to the last location for that train - e.g. 2C34 13:57 London Kings Cross to Cambridge was delayed indefinitely for all stops from Alexandria Palace onwards, but your website was showing an on time arrival at Cambridge (see attached image #1).

Good catch, thanks!

• Services with additional stops added in don't have estimated/actual times shown at certain locations (see attached image #2 for Balcombe).

Huh, strange - I'll have to investigate that a little.

• Maybe not a concern for now, but consider implementing a mechanism to avoid hitting the rate limit for LDB - 5,000 requests per hour - especially given that your website essentially polls the API every minute.

This is a good point, especially as I'm currently borrowing someone else's API key (via Huxley) due to the LDB sign-up issues! I have, for what it's worth, sent in a request for my own, which I'll start using as soon as I get it. My longer term plan is to switch to push port.

(Incidentally, out of curiosity: does RailChecker use LDB? RailChecker seems to be willing to show future departures past 4 hours, which Huxley can't; but I can't tell if this limitation is imposed by Huxley or LDB itself.)

And to return the favor: RailChecker doesn't currently seem to handle 3-way joins, as done by the highland Caledonian Sleeper; for example, tonight's departure doesn't show the Fort William portion at all. (Although I'm pretty sure my handling of this case is somewhat broken as well…) Edit: also, when detailed mode is off, only the Inverness portion is shown (even when viewed from a non-Inverness-portion departure board); presumably this relates to the join happening at a non-passenger stop.

(except less adverts/make everything free - but servers aren't free)

For what it's worth, this is currently running just fine on a hosting provider's free plan. If this gains sufficient popularity that that becomes untenable, things would get interesting, but I'll cross that bridge as and when it starts to become an issue. Presumably that's not possible for RailChecker, which is fair enough.

 

[Robski_]

(Incidentally, out of curiosity: does RailChecker use LDB? RailChecker seems to be willing to show future departures past 4 hours, which Huxley can't; but I can't tell if this limitation is imposed by Huxley or LDB itself.)

For what it's worth, this is currently running just fine on a hosting provider's free plan. If this gains sufficient popularity that that becomes untenable, things would get interesting, but I'll cross that bridge as and when it starts to become an issue. Presumably that's not possible for RailChecker, which is fair enough.

RailChecker uses the Darwin Push Port for on-the-day data and Network Rail's SCHEDULE feed for services in the future, hence the costs as it needs a server capable of handling the traffic coming from Darwin (over 2 million messages a day), all the schedules (of which there are ~5 million on the database) and the calls from the app/website.

The time restriction is imposed by LDB, as far as I know there is no way around it.

And to return the favor: RailChecker doesn't currently seem to handle 3-way joins, as done by the highland Caledonian Sleeper; for example, tonight's departure doesn't show the Fort William portion at all. (Although I'm pretty sure my handling of this case is somewhat broken as well…) Edit: also, when detailed mode is off, only the Inverness portion is shown (even when viewed from a non-Inverness-portion departure board); presumably this relates to the join happening at a non-passenger stop.

Yes, my app is currently programmed in such a way to only store one association per location so multiple divide/join associations aren't shown - that'll be fixed soon. Interesting observation about a join association not being at a passenger stop, that's going to need some more work.

 

[RailAleFan]

.

 

[YorksLad12]

Ahem... did the usual search for Leeds and one of the options was Leeds, Whitehall (LZZ). That was the temporary platform during the Leeds 1st scheme, and closed over 20 years ago. Where are you getting your data from?

 

[miklcct]

It looks great in providing real time connection info.

However, is it possible to provide a real-time timetable view for all services within the next 2 hours as well, similar to what I have done on gbtt.uk for the scheduled times?

 

[Gaelan]

Ahem... did the usual search for Leeds and one of the options was Leeds, Whitehall (LZZ). That was the temporary platform during the Leeds 1st scheme, and closed over 20 years ago. Where are you getting your data from?

Huh! I'm pulling this (indirectly, via Huxley) from the Darwin reference data. Given the "(Bus)" in the name, I suspect it's referring to a bus stop along Whitehall Road, rather than an old rail platform - do rail replacement busses ever use the Whitehall Road stops?

The question, I suppose, is whether I should be using some other data source to filter down to just "real" train stations - Railboard seems to do this, for example. My current approach surfaces some non-NR stations which nevertheless have Darwin data (examples: Brussels Midi (Eurostar), Stadium of Light (Tyne & Wear Metro), Sheffield Cathedral (Sheffield Tram Train), and Turnham Green (Underground)); the data here tends to be a little iffy, but (with the exception of the Underground, and to some extent Eurostar) there aren't really better sources, so I'm inclined to include them, as they're "better than nothing". I've added disclaimers about the data quality for the cases I'm aware of.