Slippy Map – an apology

Earlier this evening, we rolled out a ‘slippy map’ feature which lets you drag a track diagram around.

With hindsight, this wasn’t a good idea, and we didn’t test it with enough people who hadn’t requested the feature. It went down really well with people who wanted it, but several people have asked for the original functionality to be brought back.

We’ve therefore carried out an emergency code change this evening, prior to the site being much busier, to revert the functionality back to its original state. In the coming weeks, we’ll add a feature to enable the ‘slippy map’ to be toggled on and off so that, if you like it, you can use it – and if not, you don’t have to use it.

What's new – 21st February 2016

It’s been a whole month since the last release. I’d planned getting today’s release out the door much sooner – on the 7th in fact – but the day job gets in the way, and I’ve been ridiculously busy talking with freight operators and testing functionality on TOPS and TRUST.

There are only a couple of major new things this week:

  • Swindon Panel closed this weekend, and the Cholsey to Radley and Chippenham map has been updated to show the new signalling. If you’re interested in the history of Swindon Panel, check out the Swindon Panel Society
  • For those of you in Scotland, we have a map of Hillington West to Gourock and Wemyss Bay, and more on the way
  • To make the maps easier to use, you can now click and drag maps in to position, as well as zoom in and out as you do with Google Maps and OpenStreetMap. Please let us know if you like this feature – we’re hoping to make it permanent, but if it isn’t to everyone’s liking, we’ll put an option to select either type of map

And as always, there are more minor things:

  • The page footer now includes links to our Twitter and Facebook pages. Go follow us if you’re not already!
  • Some newer locations on the railway were showing as their TIPLOC (timing point), and we’ve updated our database to include proper full names for these locations
  • On the North Kent map, trains mysteriously switched lines at Blackheath Junction. This is now fixed – a signal was positioned incorrectly
  • Some of the background code on the site has been tidied up and compressed, so it should load quicker – especially when you load maps you’ve already visited
  • When a train movement is re-reported in TRUST as the result of a correction, the movement wasn’t showing up as a manual report. This is fixed
  • On the Reading map, some of the TRTS (Train Ready To Start) indicators were permanently on – this was because we’d assumed each platform had its own TRTS indicator, which isn’t the case
  • On the Chilterns map, two signals had the identity ‘9102’ near Oxford
  • On the Romford to Ingatestone and Billericay map, berths around Ingatestone weren’t showing train descriptions
  • On the Billericay to Southminster and Southend Victoria map, trains terminating at Wickford from Southminster disappeared due to an incorrect berth configuration at Wickford
  • On the Cholsey to Radley and Chippenham map, the loops at Hullavington were drawn incorrectly