New Train Plotting Tool

[johnsmith147]

Hello all,

I thought I'd share a little project I've been working on over the last week or two -- a nice way to visualise live (or not live!) train positions along a given route. It uses RTT data and then does some reasonably fancy maths to predict current locations down to the second/make everything pretty.

Attached is a plot of Newcastle to York from earlier today -- you can plot much longer routes and they look very nice but alas railforums doesn't like big pictures! Any route which has a direct train along it it can be used, though if it's really long it becomes very slow to collect all the data. Other than just knowing what's about to go past, I find it's very useful to identify how the effects of disruption ripple around.

Link here: https://trainplots.streamlit.app/

Let me know what you think, or anything reasonably simple you'd like adding.

Thanks, and enjoy fiddling,
Oliver

 

[The Planner]

Effectively a train planning graph with a "live" element. Surprised no one has managed it before with open data.

 

[Welshguy1048]

@johnsmith147

Morning

I am getting this message when i click on your link...

Screenshot of message

 

[johnsmith147]

Effectively a train planning graph with a "live" element. Surprised no one has managed it before with open data.

Indeed. Getting basic plots joining up the raw data wasn't very difficult at all, but making it neat and usable took some time...

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Mar 2025 ==

@johnsmith147

Morning

I am getting this message when i click on your link...

Screenshot of message

Thanks for having a look - I'm quite severely restricted by not wanting to pay for a server... Hopefully once this post isn't new it won't be a problem, but I'll just keep resetting it for now. Should be working again.

 

[Welshguy1048]

Indeed. Getting basic plots joining up the raw data wasn't very difficult at all, but making it neat and usable took some time...

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Mar 2025 ==


Thanks for having a look - I'm quite severely restricted by not wanting to pay for a server... Hopefully once this post isn't new it won't be a problem, but I'll just keep resetting it for now. Should be working again.

@johnsmith147

Okay

No worries

Dave

 

[sharpener]

Hello all,

I thought I'd share a little project I've been working on over the last week or two -- a nice way to visualise live (or not live!) train positions along a given route. It uses RTT data and then does some reasonably fancy maths to predict current locations down to the second/make everything pretty.

Attached is a plot of Newcastle to York from earlier today -- you can plot much longer routes and they look very nice but alas railforums doesn't like big pictures! Any route which has a direct train along it it can be used, though if it's really long it becomes very slow to collect all the data. Other than just knowing what's about to go past, I find it's very useful to identify how the effects of disruption ripple around.

Link here: https://trainplots.streamlit.app/

Let me know what you think, or anything reasonably simple you'd like adding.

Thanks, and enjoy fiddling,
Oliver

Brilliant, well done. Just what I said we needed over in this thread but the ppl there said it couldn't be done with today's technology(!)

 

[johnsmith147]

Brilliant, well done. Just what I said we needed over in this thread but the ppl there said it couldn't be done with today's technology(!)

Thank you! I had assumed the industry uses this kind of thing all the time to make signalling decisions, but perhaps not...

 

[The Planner]

Brilliant, well done. Just what I said we needed over in this thread but the ppl there said it couldn't be done with today's technology(!)

But this doesnt provide that either? Its an open source version of a live graph that some locations already have? You can't manipulate the data to see the outcome of a potential decision?

 

[Horizon22]

But this doesnt provide that either? Its an open source version of a live graph that some locations already have? You can't manipulate the data to see the outcome of a potential decision?

Exactly. Some software will map this - I believe Luminate may - and throw up warnings but it's still quite intensive to check through everything. Especially during disruption where lots of other tasks are required.

 

[splashoutradio]

This looks fantastic! You've done a superb job at making it readable and the backend required to do this is impressive. Keep up the good work!

 

[johnsmith147]

This looks fantastic! You've done a superb job at making it readable and the backend required to do this is impressive. Keep up the good work!

Thank you! Do let me know if you've got any ideas for similar projects or features to add to this one.

 

[Class 466]

I really like this! is there anyway of getting the train Headcodes to show on the plot?

 

[JKF]

I guess it’s a nice way of seeing when your train might pass others.

I’ve sometimes wanted for a similar feature on RTT, where you enter your train and as well as timing points it also lists where you pass others trains. Though I guess that would get messy very quickly if for instance you were passing through Clapham Jn or Stratford!

 

[johnsmith147]

I really like this! is there anyway of getting the train Headcodes to show on the plot?

Thanks, and not currently but I can add that next week - I'm away for a couple of days.

 

[Omnishambles]

Thank you! I had assumed the industry uses this kind of thing all the time to make signalling decisions, but perhaps not...

First saw this 15 years ago from a number of different suppliers with only Luminate now having similar version in place and not nationwide. Good luck evolving this and look forward to seeing a permanently open thread in the future with member’s views as to what they would have done by using it, should bring some (ahem!) lively discussion

 

[johnsmith147]

I really like this! is there anyway of getting the train Headcodes to show on the plot?

I've now added headcodes (rudimentarily) -- can be a bit of a mess around busy stations but I can't see an easy way around that. Also fixed a bug with trains not appearing if they start running during live plotting.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 25 Mar 2025 ==

I guess it’s a nice way of seeing when your train might pass others.

I’ve sometimes wanted for a similar feature on RTT, where you enter your train and as well as timing points it also lists where you pass others trains. Though I guess that would get messy very quickly if for instance you were passing through Clapham Jn or Stratford!

I could probably write something like this without too much new code, but it would likely be quite difficult to predict where things pass exactly without knowing all the linespeeds and things. If there is keenness from others then I'll give it a go

 

[pokemonsuper9]

I get why they are like this but the distance values would probably be better displayed as the multiples of 1/80 miles they are rather than floating point inaccuracies.

 

[johnsmith147]

I get why they are like this but the distance values would probably be better displayed as the multiples of 1/80 miles they are rather than floating point inaccuracies.
View attachment 177164

Indeed - I've not seen it do that before on the routes I've tested. Will fix.

 

[PyrahnaRanger]

So I tried this on the Cumbrian coast line - just to get a feel for what it does. In one sense, it's quite a boring graph as there's only really one train at a time going up and down, but the passing place looks about right from memory.

What's also interesting is that it shows the service pattern very nicely over the course of the day - mostly hourly(ish) with a suddent spike in the number of trains in the afternoon, then a drop off for going home time!

Good effort @johnsmith147 !

 

[johnsmith147]

So I tried this on the Cumbrian coast line - just to get a feel for what it does. In one sense, it's quite a boring graph as there's only really one train at a time going up and down, but the passing place looks about right from memory.

What's also interesting is that it shows the service pattern very nicely over the course of the day - mostly hourly(ish) with a suddent spike in the number of trains in the afternoon, then a drop off for going home time!

Good effort @johnsmith147 !

Thanks! It's nice to test on lines like that because they're fast, but I find there are often gaps in the data that make it show strange things or miss trains entirely... The Harrogate loop or Settle-Carlisle are good too.

 

[johnsmith147]

Just fixed some bugs caused by BST (never occurred to me that such things are problematic), changed the operator colour schemes to match Wikipedia and added horizontal lines to mark the locations of stations. Thanks everyone for continuing to use this.

 

[sqwizz]

Good job on this, pretty fun to mess around with.

Might be handy to be able to choose the date before it looks for a train, since if there are no trains today (eg no sunday services), you can't progress any further to be able to pick a previous date.

 

[johnsmith147]

Good job on this, pretty fun to mess around with.

Might be handy to be able to choose the date before it looks for a train, since if there are no trains today (eg no sunday services), you can't progress any further to be able to pick a previous date.

Thanks. Indeed that would be helpful but it would be quite difficult (and very slow) to do this due to the limitations of the data. If you specify a route using a specific train from the RTT code then you can pick whichever date you like, which I think should be OK for most purposes?

 

[D6975]

I asked it to give headcodes, but it didn't show any at all.

 

[johnsmith147]

I asked it to give headcodes, but it didn't show any at all.

It'll only show head codes for trains which are currently active (ones with markers on the live plot) - otherwise it would be a bit of a mess. I can't really think of a neat way around that with a static plot...

 

[Eastwestjct]

Has this stopped working

 

[jupiter]

Great work, I just used it successfully.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

Has this stopped working

Working fine for me.