Real-time map of Great Britain's rail network • Hacker News Board

Re: Real-time map of Great Britain's rail network

#111

Post by sbb_equals_ffs » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

Bengalilol wrote: post #54

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...

It's certainly a cool map and useful to get a general idea how many trains are around at any given time, but it's important to note that this is not real data. They use the train schedule combined with the projected delay to estimate track location. I'm not sure if it's because SBB has an interest in keeping reported delays low or if they think exposing real data is a security risk, but I noticed the data being fake on several occasions, for example:

- My train wasn't able to continue its journey and was stuck between two stations for a few minutes while the map showed it continue to the next few stations up until the point where it started moving again, when their App also showed it running with a delay of 8min.

- On several occasions: watching the map show a train roll into the station and driving off, while seeing from my window that the train is only just arriving when the map shows it as between stations already.

Re: Real-time map of Great Britain's rail network

#112

Post by dboreham » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

For the similarly confused: it displays times in your local browser time zone, not the time zone of the actual train. I'm pretty sure this is an oversight since there's no universe in which I want train times not in their native time zone.

Re: Real-time map of Great Britain's rail network

#113

Post by davidpapermill » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:33 PM UTC

pmg101 wrote: post #62

I had to press the Back button a LOT of times to get back to HN!

Click and hold the back button.

Re: Real-time map of Great Britain's rail network

#114

Post by davidpapermill » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:34 PM UTC

Are the trains located where the urban areas are, or are the urban areas built around the train network?

It's chicken and egg question, but in Manchester and London it's very clear that mass transit led to urban development, rather than the other way around.

It's very surprising that cities like Leeds have no mass transit at all, and sizeable cities like Liverpool and Birmingham don't have much.

Re: Real-time map of Great Britain's rail network

#115

Post by lewispollard » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:48 PM UTC

parkersweb wrote: post #55

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. Nei…

Yeah it only seems to show small station near me, and not the main city stations, not sure why but it's very incomplete, and not related to age. For example Sheffield station isn't on the map, and that opened in 1870.

Re: Real-time map of Great Britain's rail network

#116

Post by Bengalilol » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:00 PM UTC

sbb_equals_ffs wrote: post #111

Bengalilol wrote: post #54

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...

It's certainly a cool map and useful to get a general idea how many trains are around at any given time, but it's important to note that this is not real data. They use the train schedule combined with the projected delay to estimate track location. I'm not sure if it's because SBB has an interest in keeping reported delays low or if they think exposing real data is a security risk, but I noticed the data being fake…

You are right, the devs says that the vehicle positions are estimated from the official timetable and real-time GTFS-RT delay information, rather than from publicly available GPS coordinates.

https://opentransportdata.swiss/en/cookbook/realtime-predict...>

btw while looking for th GTFS-RT info, I found this site, which is less minimal but has a 3D cockpit beta functionality...

https://transitflow.ch/>

Re: Real-time map of Great Britain's rail network

#117

Post by waiwai933 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:04 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #108

greengreengrass wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 typ…

Do trains have real time position sensing and reporting now? Feels to me like that should be something that could (and should) have been done 20 years ago at least. You don't even need GPS - even wheel-based odometry should work very well. Visual odometry can be used to detect wheels slipping if necessary. Hell you could probably count sleepers.

Newer fleets will have GPS units on board that report back to Control, but it's not universal and I don't believe there are industry-wide standards or APIs. Signalbox is definitely extrapolating from TD/TRUST/Darwin, not GPS reports.

Re: Real-time map of Great Britain's rail network

#118

Post by singularity2001 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:21 PM UTC

Now "Jetlag the game" HAS to shoot their next episode over there

Re: Real-time map of Great Britain's rail network

#119

Post by macleginn » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:40 PM UTC

nisiddharth wrote: post #69

Indian equivalent: https://railradar.in/railradar

The overall resemblance to Ticket to Ride's Indian map is rather striking.

Re: Real-time map of Great Britain's rail network

#120

Post by greyday » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:54 PM UTC

scoot wrote: post #51

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 le…

I'm also close enough to a railway line to see the trains. There are two lines near us - a fast line (that I can see) and a slow line on the other side of the estate. The map showed a train moving (quickly) on the slow line, at just about the time I saw it fly past out my window. So it isn't even accurate as to which line the train is on.

Possibly useful as a funky station arrival board, but overlaying that data on an actual map is a bit misleading.