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Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

trains.fyi

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Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#11

Post by oldpersonintx »

h1fra wrote: post #7

Looking at the speed of the trains is a bit depressing. USA had so much potential to built the best high-speed railway network...

it already has something much more sophisticated - a high-speed air network

think your train is efficient? a plane can fly in a straight line between any two points in the US! beat that! ever see a train cross one of the great lakes? no challenge for a plane! rerouting a rail line can cost billions...but only a tiny bit of fuel to reroute a plane...not to mention I can go coast to coast in five hours on a plane but the world's fastest train would take much longer...

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#12

Post by morkalork »

dewert wrote: post #5
thomasahle wrote: post #3

I didn't know there was a trans-Canadian railroad. Did anyone try it?

I haven't tried it, because it's outrageously expensive to get a cabin with a bed, and I don't want to sit in a chair for a week. But it's pretty famous - we even have a song about it! [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Railroad_Trilogy

Taking the dome car through the rockies and a bit of the prairies would be awesome but flying out there just for that is hard to justify.

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#14

Post by ryry »

seedless-sensat wrote: post #10

I am looking at this while sitting on Amtrak. It is about 14mi behind my current position, but still very cool!

Yeah, I'm going to add a disclaimer about this. I've been watching the GO trains from my window this morning and they lag about a minute behind. My site grabs data on a minute interval, and I know some of the API's say they purposefully add GPS lag.

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#15

Post by phyphy »

Here in India we have an app named "Where is my train?". Local people use this app a lot when traveling by train. It's not government owned either and has no ads. Just throwing in here for some inspiration since I don't know the inner workings of that app.

Edit: It uses nearby cell towers to estimate the location of train

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#16

Post by zhivota »

ryry wrote: post #9
svarlamov wrote: post #4

Love this project! Can you tell us a bit about what stack you used to build this? Were there easy-to-use APIs to get this data in realtime?

thanks! I did a quick write up about it here: https://rydercalmdown.com/projects/trains-fyi/ The hardest part was learning about GTFS-RT, which was a data format I wasn't familiar with until now.

Very nice, thanks for the write up :). I was thinking about how you could get route maps, without actually having to source shape files. Given you are tracking trains every minute, you could probably build up your own route maps by dropping a point every time you get one, and connecting them with straight lines. Over time the route would become closer and closer to reality.

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#17

Post by hardcopy »

seedless-sensat wrote: post #10

I am looking at this while sitting on Amtrak. It is about 14mi behind my current position, but still very cool!

For Amtrak only you can use the official source https://www.amtrak.com/track-your-train.html too (it shows route and also delay)

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#18

Post by dylan604 »

h1fra wrote: post #7

Looking at the speed of the trains is a bit depressing. USA had so much potential to built the best high-speed railway network...

The train situation in the USofA is depressing on so many more levels than just speed. Availability is even worse. I'm in Dallas, but to get to Denver, I have to go to Chicago first and involves a >2 hour bus ride along the way. WTF?

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#19

Post by gosub100 »

h1fra wrote: post #7

Looking at the speed of the trains is a bit depressing. USA had so much potential to built the best high-speed railway network...

Most of the states are too big to be economical. I think the biggest disappointment with US rail is that it doesn't get enough trucks off the highway. There should be no reason for trucks to venture more than a couple hundred miles from the nearest rail terminal. Not only is it wasteful, but it's more dangerous having trucks driving across the entire country.
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