This only seems to be standard overground trains. If you add in metro networks like the London tube, or light rail / trams like in Manchester, then you’d get at least hundreds more.
> Signalbox's technology identifies the train a device is on by matching a snapshot of smartphone data to a train’s trajectory data. The technology uses advanced algorithms works even with severely degraded data. We are able to pinpoint a smartphone to any type of train without background location tracking or hardware.
I remember my colleague from MFF UK, Robert Babilon, producing his first real-time map of Czech trains in 2004.
The page, called Babitron, still exists and still keeps that delightful 2004 look. I visited it a few days ago. Unfortunately today there is a message "We are moving Babitron to a different server", so the link isn't working.
very cool. Unrelated but anytime im looking at a map be it city roads, rails subway, etc i wish there was a way to filter the layers based on construction date.
I would like to be able to see when each road/section was built. I assume with GoogleEarth and other databases it should be possible to run some kind changelog comparison and do this at scale for at least the last 20 years or so.
Edit: I've reviewed your last few dozen comments, and too many of them are inflammatory with invocations of race politics. Other recent comments are low-substance snark. We need all this to stop. I can see from earlier comments that you know what kind of discussion is appropriate and inappropriate on HN. You've made good comments in the past so I don't want to ban you, but we can't let this kind of activity continue. HN is only a place where people want to participate because others make the effort to contribute positively and observe the guidelines. Please make an effort to raise the standards rather than drag them down.
Perhaps I’m going mad based off the praise heaped in other responses, but - something seems wildly off with the locations?
I just witnessed a London Liverpool street service plough through the M25 motorway - about 40 miles south of it's typical route and 5 miles south of the nearest actual railway.
Dozens of the trains seem to be traversing through the English channel/La Manche towards the north sea.
In fact the number of trains actually tracking a rail line (and this is outside of the cities where the tube/metro might obscure this) seems in the minority. Most seem to be going straight through the middle of farmers fields on some obscure course unrelated to theirs.
suggests the data mostly comes from railway signalling information, plus a bit of "AI" in some way. I wonder how far apart railway signals usually are, or what the AI is trained on, or anything really vs just looking at a map.
A couple of obvious observations:
* Does not include Northern Ireland or the Isle of Man, both of which have notable rail networks (as they are not in GB).
* Does not include heritage railways. There are a number of other railways on here which are not marked but offer tourist travel.
NI gets slightly messy; do you include the Enterprise service to Dublin? If so, only the ones run by Translink, or also the ones run by Irish Rail? (The Dublin-Belfast service is a particularly weird train service in that it has _two_ operators, with joint ownership of the rolling stock).
You can also buy tickets from either operator, but you have to buy tickets from the operator in the country that you're leaving (even if they're return tickets). This leads to the interesting situation where a Dublin->Belfast->Dublin return journey a couple of weeks out costs 28EUR, but a Belfast->Dublin->Belfast return journey on the same day costs 30GBP (~35EUR).
And if you're over 65 and live in Northern Ireland, you can use it for free, but you have to be over 66 to use it for free if you live in the Republic of Ireland.
Currently it's just the one cross-border link, but the 2050 rail plan calls for two more, so they'll presumably at some point have to make all this less weird.
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 left the station yet.
- Trains on the map seemingly stopping and changing direction, only to reverse course once again.
The map shows a single line segment for what is in fact a multi-line stretch of railway. That's okay as a simplification (I guess), but the icons aren't pinned to the line, so appear to be driving off the track, or even on the adjacent street.
As for realtime - even if the data was accurate and timely, a 2Hz refresh rate most definitely isn't realtime.
Sorry if it seems like I'm shitting on it - it's a fun toy, but I wouldn't depend on it for anything important.
Dutch (and Dutch-bound) rail network overview: https://treinposities.nl/
And the equivalent for buses: https://busposities.nl/
Not all of them have GPS trackers, so some positions are guessed.
There's functionality for this in the official Dutch Railways app, but it looks like they didn't bother putting that onto their website. There is a common source of open data for most of these details, but I don't find the docs to be very complete.
61 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadHmm, that's...interesting?
Past similar HN submission got no attention, whereas the UK's top page. Interesting !
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45249351
The page, called Babitron, still exists and still keeps that delightful 2004 look. I visited it a few days ago. Unfortunately today there is a message "We are moving Babitron to a different server", so the link isn't working.
https://kam.mff.cuni.cz/~babilon/zpmapa2
I would like to be able to see when each road/section was built. I assume with GoogleEarth and other databases it should be possible to run some kind changelog comparison and do this at scale for at least the last 20 years or so.
London: https://londonunderground.live
this reminds me of the London specific equivalent posted awhile back: https://londonunderground.live (previously discussed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43651390).
Edit: I've reviewed your last few dozen comments, and too many of them are inflammatory with invocations of race politics. Other recent comments are low-substance snark. We need all this to stop. I can see from earlier comments that you know what kind of discussion is appropriate and inappropriate on HN. You've made good comments in the past so I don't want to ban you, but we can't let this kind of activity continue. HN is only a place where people want to participate because others make the effort to contribute positively and observe the guidelines. Please make an effort to raise the standards rather than drag them down.
I just witnessed a London Liverpool street service plough through the M25 motorway - about 40 miles south of it's typical route and 5 miles south of the nearest actual railway. Dozens of the trains seem to be traversing through the English channel/La Manche towards the north sea.
In fact the number of trains actually tracking a rail line (and this is outside of the cities where the tube/metro might obscure this) seems in the minority. Most seem to be going straight through the middle of farmers fields on some obscure course unrelated to theirs.
https://vgcgroup.co.uk/news/signalbox-for-train-locations/
suggests the data mostly comes from railway signalling information, plus a bit of "AI" in some way. I wonder how far apart railway signals usually are, or what the AI is trained on, or anything really vs just looking at a map.
You can also buy tickets from either operator, but you have to buy tickets from the operator in the country that you're leaving (even if they're return tickets). This leads to the interesting situation where a Dublin->Belfast->Dublin return journey a couple of weeks out costs 28EUR, but a Belfast->Dublin->Belfast return journey on the same day costs 30GBP (~35EUR).
And if you're over 65 and live in Northern Ireland, you can use it for free, but you have to be over 66 to use it for free if you live in the Republic of Ireland.
Currently it's just the one cross-border link, but the 2050 rail plan calls for two more, so they'll presumably at some point have to make all this less weird.
As for realtime - even if the data was accurate and timely, a 2Hz refresh rate most definitely isn't realtime.
Sorry if it seems like I'm shitting on it - it's a fun toy, but I wouldn't depend on it for anything important.
There's functionality for this in the official Dutch Railways app, but it looks like they didn't bother putting that onto their website. There is a common source of open data for most of these details, but I don't find the docs to be very complete.