The Man in Seat Sixty-One

This site really helped me get oriented to the India rail system (or at least as much as is possible without experiencing it first hand).

Got a first class ticket from Kolkata to Gaya (why not, was cheap and it was my first time in India). The attendants were very kind, unusually so, and it was only after getting off the train that it finally clicked why one attendant kept saying with a loving smile, "gips, gips" -- he wanted a tip like I'd given one of the other attendants! (who was able to speak basic English and asked for a tip)

It was a nice journey, though the Gaya train station at 4AM, nothing prepares you for that, weaving through 500 homeless people sleeping on the ground; emerging from the mass of humanity to inhale the thick, dusty, diesel saturated air, on the way to Bodh Gaya, the Bodhi Tree, the birthplace of Buddha's awakening -- welcome to India :)

If you are a cycling person, this is like the Sheldon Brown of trains.

Someone make a golden statue of this guy.

This website is indispensable and the guy who runs it is such a train fan. It’s amazing and he’s been enthusiastic to receive updates for the site whenever I’ve gone far enough afield to fill in a number or piece of information he hasn’t gotten a chance to track down yet, or grab a photo of a station he hasn’t seen in a bit that’s changed, etc.

Whenever I go to a country I spend some time on seat61 looking up the local train system. For a number of systems without websites, seat61 is the place where you can find the information about what trains go where before you get there and it’s just slowly (actually surprisingly quickly, all things considered) populated as people find out various pieces from ticket agents on site or physical boards posted at stations and email bits and pieces in.

This site recently helped me a lot in a tourism travel to Europe.

The general info is googlable, but it helped my choose a seat that was facing forward and positioned in the middle of a window. A very relevant information for me and my wife wanting to observe the world while traveling. And an information that we wouldn't be able to google.

I learned about it years ago here in HN I believe. It would be hard to find by myself googling something like this too

That's the internet I love. Way to go Man in Seat 61!

Marketers: I hate your stupid, empty landing page.