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RealTimeTrains website

DaveHarries

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A substantial update has been made today behind the scenes. There are vast improvements to the geography engine which means distances will now appear on most passenger services and a reasonable chunk of other services, there is a new TD handler meaning less 'approaching'/'arriving'/'at platform' hanging around. Some reductions to GB Railfreight service obfuscation has also been made. Also a new status page with better info about the feed uptime: https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/about/status/

https://blog.realtimetrains.com/2020/01/new-realtime-trains-stage-2/
Thanks for your work on continued improvements to the site.

Dave
 
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Condor7

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Anyone who uses ‘obfuscation’ in a sentence has my respect straight away. :)
Would there be any chance of Named Trains ever being identified i.e. The Highland Chieftain etc?
 

Mag_seven

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The "predictive" facility when you type in a station name has gone again - is it coming back?

EDIT: seems to have come back again in the last 5 mins!
 

td97

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there is a new TD handler meaning less 'approaching'/'arriving'/'at platform' hanging around.
Hi, you asked to be informed if the "Approaching’/‘Arriving’/‘At platform’ notifications on locations hanging on long after the service has departed" issue still occurs. For your information, yes it does, for quite a few services at Bromley Cross and Hall i' th' Wood, as in the link here https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/detailed/BMC/2020-01-24/0000-2359?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt.
Thanks for your ongoing time & effort with the website :lol:.
 

Muzer

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Surprised there's no post about this already, but I couldn't find one!

From noon today RTT has been showing allocated locomotives for GBRf services. Only allocations that were made after the feature went live at noon are showing, so any trains from this morning or departing shortly after noon won't show. Tom has confirmed on Twitter that this data is not open data, but is made available thanks to a private agreement between Realtime Trains and GBRf.

Example: https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/H47928/2020-02-26/detailed
 

TrainTube

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Surprised there's no post about this already, but I couldn't find one!

From noon today RTT has been showing allocated locomotives for GBRf services. Only allocations that were made after the feature went live at noon are showing, so any trains from this morning or departing shortly after noon won't show. Tom has confirmed on Twitter that this data is not open data, but is made available thanks to a private agreement between Realtime Trains and GBRf.

Example: https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/H47928/2020-02-26/detailed
Wow, showing the loco number aswell!
If only passenger TOCs could make agreements with RTT :D
 

Peter C

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Surprised there's no post about this already, but I couldn't find one!

From noon today RTT has been showing allocated locomotives for GBRf services. Only allocations that were made after the feature went live at noon are showing, so any trains from this morning or departing shortly after noon won't show. Tom has confirmed on Twitter that this data is not open data, but is made available thanks to a private agreement between Realtime Trains and GBRf.

Example: https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/H47928/2020-02-26/detailed
Cool - I've spent many a while at Banbury, sat there, wondering what engine will be on a certain service! Thanks very much for letting everyone know... I echo TrainTube here - in an ideal world, all TOCs and FOCs would make agreements with RTT to show unit numbers but until that happens, well, we won't have that data on RTT I suppose! :D

-Peter
 

AlexNL

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A while ago I made a browser extension, RTT Mapper, which adds some functionality to Realtime Trains which I think may be of interest to some here.

My extension adds a 'show on map' button to Realtime Trains, which displays the route taken by a train as well as the last reported location of the train. If a train is (partly) cancelled this is indicated by changing the colour of the line. You can see the approximate route length by clicking the info button in the bottom right.

I've used open data to find geographical coordinates for all the CRS and TIPLOC locations which gives a rudimentary route followed by a train. Sometimes it may take a while for the map to load, they're built on OpenStreetMaps and I do not (currently) have my own map server.

If you use Google Chrome or the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge, you can install RTT Mapper from the Chrome extension store.

Please note that I'm wholly independent from Tom and I'm not involved with RTT's development whatsoever. :)
 

Muzer

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A while ago I made a browser extension, RTT Mapper, which adds some functionality to Realtime Trains which I think may be of interest to some here.

My extension adds a 'show on map' button to Realtime Trains, which displays the route taken by a train as well as the last reported location of the train. If a train is (partly) cancelled this is indicated by changing the colour of the line. You can see the approximate route length by clicking the info button in the bottom right.

I've used open data to find geographical coordinates for all the CRS and TIPLOC locations which gives a rudimentary route followed by a train. Sometimes it may take a while for the map to load, they're built on OpenStreetMaps and I do not (currently) have my own map server.

If you use Google Chrome or the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge, you can install RTT Mapper from the Chrome extension store.

Please note that I'm wholly independent from Tom and I'm not involved with RTT's development whatsoever. :)
Nice, that looks pretty cool! I noticed when clicking on a Waterloo-Weymouth there's something around the Totton area which looks a bit off-course...
 

AlexNL

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Nice, that looks pretty cool! I noticed when clicking on a Waterloo-Weymouth there's something around the Totton area which looks a bit off-course...
It looks like the coordinates for Totton West (TIPLOC: TOTTW) are a bit out of place.

I've used publicly available data sets to compile the coordinates files used to match CRS and TIPLOCs to GPS locations. While the data in there is okay in mostt cases, sometimes there are some errors. The worst I've seen so far is Grangetown Cleveland (near Middlesbrough) being placed as Grangetown station in Wales. :D

I've logged it for review :)
 

duffield

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Excellent! Is there a way to search which service any particular loco is assigned to?

It should be *technically* possible, using the (for example) wget tool and scripting, to (e.g.) extract all the data for all services between particular stations in text form and select by loco number. However, I'm not up to doing that myself and I'm not sure it would be fair to RTT Tom to scrape his site like that without agreement. Maybe Tom would provide a facility if you bunged him some money? :E
 

takno

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It looks like the coordinates for Totton West (TIPLOC: TOTTW) are a bit out of place.

I've used publicly available data sets to compile the coordinates files used to match CRS and TIPLOCs to GPS locations. While the data in there is okay in mostt cases, sometimes there are some errors. The worst I've seen so far is Grangetown Cleveland (near Middlesbrough) being placed as Grangetown station in Wales. :D

I've logged it for review :)
I did a bunch of work at one point to manually fix dodgy eastings and northings from the RailReferences file. The results are here: https://gist.github.com/notak/08c3fc32ff2553de0509e0a7efce2041
 

Adam Williams

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If you use Google Chrome or the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge, you can install RTT Mapper from the Chrome extension store.
Hey, this is a really cool add-on!

Do you have any plans to offer this for Firefox on https://addons.mozilla.org/?

I think it requires minimal effort on your part, something like the below?

Code:
--- manifest_old.json    2020-02-29 14:23:27.000000000 +0000
+++ manifest.json    2020-02-29 14:24:57.727055856 +0000
@@ -1,11 +1,10 @@
 {
-"update_url": "https://clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx",
-
     "name": "RTT Mapper",
     "version": "0.5.1.0",
     "description": "Adds mapping functionality to RealtimeTrains.co.uk",
     "manifest_version": 2,
     "permissions": [
+        "https://*.tile.openstreetmap.org/",
         "activeTab"
     ],
     "icons": {

Screenshot from 2020-02-29 14-28-05.png
 

AlexNL

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I did a bunch of work at one point to manually fix dodgy eastings and northings from the RailReferences file. The results are here: https://gist.github.com/notak/08c3fc32ff2553de0509e0a7efce2041

Very nice, thank you! I'll see when I can incorporate those into my extension's list of locations.

Hey, this is a really cool add-on!
Thank you! :)

Do you have any plans to offer this for Firefox on https://addons.mozilla.org/?

I think it requires minimal effort on your part, something like the below?
I've toyed with Firefox extensions in the past and it looks like it's fairly easy to get everything working, so I can't see a technical reason why not.

It's more a process thing - right now when I have an update ready I just create a zip and upload it to the Chrome Web Store. When I'm dealing with multiple extension stores, I'd prefer to have a way to automatically update the extension on all stores at the same time. I'll have to look into this.
 

Tom

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As spotted further upthread, GB Railfreight services now show their locomotive allocations. The formal announcement is at https://blog.realtimetrains.com/2020/03/gb-railfreight-release-locomotive-allocations/.

It includes any freight and charter service operated by GBRf, but not any scheduled passenger services as these will be typically done under a different TAC or service codes (e.g. Caledonian Sleeper).

It has taken about a year to get to this point so don't expect to see any more operators anytime soon barring a sudden opening of the flood gates from the industry and all operators dropping their allocations suddenly.
 

BRX

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As spotted further upthread, GB Railfreight services now show their locomotive allocations. The formal announcement is at https://blog.realtimetrains.com/2020/03/gb-railfreight-release-locomotive-allocations/.

It includes any freight and charter service operated by GBRf, but not any scheduled passenger services as these will be typically done under a different TAC or service codes (e.g. Caledonian Sleeper).

It has taken about a year to get to this point so don't expect to see any more operators anytime soon barring a sudden opening of the flood gates from the industry and all operators dropping their allocations suddenly.
Interesting ... what's in it for them?
 

Tom

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It's often reported that some staff use RTT - maybe they think it will sometimes be useful for their own employees?
I very much presented this as a 'why not' to them, rather than any compelling business case reason...

There is a known issue when the train has a change of identity. It's in the pipeline to be fixed.
 

66Yorks

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17 Apr 2015
Messages
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Excellent news. Am I right in saying that all freight services on RTT have the code as ZZ?
 

DavidGrain

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29 Dec 2017
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Excellent news. Am I right in saying that all freight services on RTT have the code as ZZ?

ZZ is a generic code for freight services. There is not a code for the individual Freight Operators so could be any freight operator. I have also seen it used in one instance where a train changed part way through a journey from LM to 'Unknown Operator' but this was a service that ran once a week for some legacy reason and no longer runs.
 

The_Train

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2 Jun 2018
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What a fantastic development this is, more great work by the RTT guys and gals. Would be great if this caused an avalanche of FOCs looking to offer the same, although I'd be amazed if they did. That said sometimes it can be enough for them to see a competitor doing something that they aren't for them to want to change their ways so we shall see
 

Kite159

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ZZ is a generic code for freight services. There is not a code for the individual Freight Operators so could be any freight operator. I have also seen it used in one instance where a train changed part way through a journey from LM to 'Unknown Operator' but this was a service that ran once a week for some legacy reason and no longer runs.

I think it did that with Birmingham New Street - Rugeley Trent Valley services, changing to unknown operator between two of the stations at the northern end of the line
 

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