Was it really a fortnight since the last release? It seems like much longer – probably the cold weather and staying in drinking tea and writing code.

Here’s the round-up of everything that’s new in OpenTrainTimes this release.

First up – schedule linking. Where a map shows a train description in white, you can click on that description and bring up the schedule for the train. However, due to a long-standing (and now really obvious) coding fault, trains were frequently linked to completely the wrong schedules. This is a persistent problem that lots of people have reported, but I’ve never quite been able to work it out.

The good news is that I’ve mostly fixed this and dropped back to a more pessimistic mode of “If you’re not sure, don’t link it”. This means some trains will be running around the network unlinked and you won’t be able to click on them, but the trains that are linked will be much more accurate. However, where a train starts its journey outside an area covered by a train describer, it won’t always be linked – a fix for that is coming in the next few weeks. There are also some problems where a train steps out of one train describer and then steps in to an adjacent one without a period of the train appearing on both. Three Bridges appears to be one of them, and a fix for that will be coming soon.

Aside from that big improvement, there’s a load of work that’s been done on the maps:

• When in a meeting a few weeks ago, I found a colleague using OpenTrainTimes who immediately asked why I hadn’t covered more of the Great Eastern Main Line. I didn’t have a decent answer, so there’s now maps of Romford to Ingatestone, Ingatestone to Hatfield Peverel and Billericay to Southminster and Southend Victoria
• Some berths on the Dagenham Dock to Stanford-le-Hope map were in the wrong place, and they’ve been put in to the right places now
• On the Liverpool Street to Romford map, the turnback siding at Chadwell Heath is now shown
• The routes from signal 5100 on the Esher to Basingstoke map are now shown properly
• The London Brige map has a crossover on the Low Level lines repositioned, TL2027 signal has been removed as it’s not commissioned, and TL2831 signal has been fixed
• During the last set of changes at Stafford, some of the tracks from the south end of the station were muddled up – these are now fixed
• Stations between Ladywell to Hayes have been added to the North Kent Lines map
• Schedule pages now show whether a movement report was received automatically (blank), manually (a keyboard icon), via TOPS2000 (a screen) or via GPS (a wireless icon), and they also show the actual times, rather than just the deviation from the timetable
• The TRTS indications at Cannon Street have been removed, as they never worked
• Coventry Arena and Bermuda Park now feature on the Rugby to Nuneaton map

And finally, we’ll be dropping support for Internet Explorer 8 in a few months time. Older versions of web browsers make it really difficult to keep the site up-to-date and limit the new features I can roll out. If you’re going to be affected by this, please get in touch via email and let me know.

That’s it – enjoy the new maps and keep your feedback coming!

// Peter

There’s no rest for the wicked – this week, there are two brand new maps and one extended map:

• The London Marylebone map now covers West Ruislip to Bicester North and Oxford Parkway
• The Esher to Basingstoke map covers more of the South West Main Line
• The Worplesdon to Portsmouth Harbour map completes our coverage of the Portsmouth Direct route

There are also a few minor fixes:

• Schedule linking on the maps is further improved, although it still isn’t 100% perfect
• Some missing berths on the new North Lincolnshire maps have been added
• A few inconsistencies on the York, Darlington and Glasgow maps are now fixed
• When a train is cancelled entirely, it will now show on a location page as ‘CANX’ for the arrival and departure times

There’s more coming in the next release in a fortnight or so – including some analytics and updates to the real-time digrams.

As always, please keep your feedback coming in to support@opentraintimes.com. Whilst I can’t get everything done each week, I really do look at every email and make a note of your feedback and comments.

// Peter