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Real-time map of Great Britain's rail network

map.signalbox.io

131–140 of 165 posts

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

#131
post #62

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

Click and hold the back button.

My back button is actually a triangle at the bottom left of my Android screen so I don't think that works, but it's a great hack to know for desktop and I'll remember it! Much obliged

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

#133
post #84
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Acquired by Trainline in 2023, Signalbox works with organisations across the rail ecosystem to improve customer information and operational awareness." https://www.signalbox.io/news/southeastern-launches-track-my...

So, we don't know if this is the case, but one way to do this is not to ask the phones but the cells . The mobile network has to know where the phones are by cell; the cells are often small relative to the speed of the train; there are also cells installed specifically to improve service on trains, or provide a base station to the train wifi, or for communications to railway staff. If you get a bunch of phones switch…

You're missing the fact that the system is also divided into explicit signal blocks and those blocks do report train presence to a centralized system[1]. I am not certain if they want to share that information, but if someone got serious about building a system like signalbox I'd expect that NetworkRail would either offer their data, a degraded version of their data on a lag for security reasons, or consider those security reasons so serious that they'd attempt to prohibit deriving that data from cell signals.

1. Mostly, some signal blocks are still entirely manually managed but, IIRC, at this point those manually managed segments are low traffic areas where only one train is allowed into the block group at a time even if the old signal management systems would allow multiple trains.

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

#134

Shameless self-promotion: I make a departure board for the Swiss public transportation network: https://www.stationdisplay.com/

A bit of feedback on the Try it out section: - So for some stations (most?) it shows that all trains go to the selected station, nowhere else. - Also the search show only one station at a time instead of the multiple that could match the search. And even if we typed the whole station name, it might match another station, which mean the station is not selectable at all.

Thank you for your feedback. Saddly at this time the try out widget is not feature complete as the display. I may remove it completely as it gives a false impression of what the display can do.

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

#136
post #6

Checkout the French equivalent : https://carto.tchoo.net . Looks more complete. Past similar HN submission got no attention, whereas the UK's top page. Interesting ! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45249351

Is the interesting part the upvotes, meaning there's more people interested in UK train networks than French ones ? And it's a comment on demographics ? Or is the interesting part that the UK one is real-time, and the French one isn't (or at least, zooming in, I don't see them moving).

It may simply be that the language of HN is English, so more people here are, in fact, interested in UK train networks. The moving bits on this site are guesstimated based on schedules and delays and not based on real position information.

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

#137
Cool app with some useful features.

Here is my custom map of UK trains that are affordable

https://www.map.signalbox.io/?location=@52.86376,-2.32537,4....

And here is my map of UK trains that aren't subsidised despite being 'private companies'

https://www.map.signalbox.io/?location=@52.86376,-2.32537,4....

And here is a map of trains that use the fact they are moving quickly through the air to provide some semblance of ventilation

https://www.map.signalbox.io/?location=@52.86376,-2.32537,4....

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

#138

Cool app with some useful features. Here is my custom map of UK trains that are affordable https://www.map.signalbox.io/?location=@52.86376,-2.32537,4.... And here is my map of UK trains that aren't subsidised despite being 'private companies' https://www.map.signalbox.io/?location=@52.86376,-2.32537,4.... And here is a map of trains that use the fact they are moving quickly through the air to provide some semblance…

Hey wait a minute, there isn't any train on any of these maps!

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

#139
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're misunderstanding what they are saying. They don't use background location data, but they do use your current location data. Try the "Find My Train" demo on their site - it asks for location permission. Or their API - it also expects device location data: > At a minimum, requests to the detect endpoint _must_ contain a device's location measurement. Additional fields can be included where available to i…

wait - so you think that the map is made up of people who are all sitting on that website using the Find My Train demo? I think you are missing the point - what is collecting data on all those trains.

The location of the train comes from trackside sensors and is available as a free API. It doesn't give actual lat/lon – it only shows when it went past a particular checkpoint. The part that needs location permission is the one that works out which train you are on. It doesn't use that to produce the main map, it's just to work out which train you are likely to be on.

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

#140

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.

Unsurprisingly they mostly run trains to places where people live, but there is some influence the other way too. New commuter rail lines have historically lead to more development around the stations (e.g. Metro-land 100 years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro-land), and in cases where a station is built for reasons other than there being a centre of population (e.g. because it's an important junction) then that does also tend to lead to houses being built. Of course in more recent times this hasn't happened because you can hardly ever build outside of existing conurbations, but that is changing and several new towns are being planned for new or existing train stations.
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