Say hello to our Leyland to Lancaster map, including Preston – by popular demand – which was thrown together in a few spare hours this week, along with these little fixes to existing maps:

• On the Slough map, the platform at Burnham has been re-positioned in to the correct loctaion
• On the Epsom map, the platform at Hinchley Wood has also been re-positioned in to the correct location
• The Esher to Basingstoke map now has route indications for the Woking area so you can see which platform trains will be routed toward before it happens
• Technical issues with the York map mean that the signal aspects were sometimes not updating for a long period of time. This turns out to be an issue in the signalling centre completely outside our control – so the incorrect indications are removed from the map so we don’t show you knowingly incorrect information. Also, a missing crossover has been put in north of the station
• On the Grove Park to Bromley North and Hildenborough map, some signals which share a berth with another signal (configured as ‘dual berths’ on the train describer) were never showing any trains. This has been fixed for Orpington, and we’ll be fixing the other maps from Ashford IECC ‘A’ soon

Now for a few facts. The new map of Lancaster is our 81st, all of which have been drawn by hand from scratch – every single one. There’s no magic system that can replace a human’s judgement on how to lay out a map and make it look clean and tidy. We’ve also got over 24,000 different signalling elements displayed on the maps – signals, routes, track circuits and ‘Train Ready to Start’ indicators.

Each month, we see about 35,000 unique users on the site, and most days there well over 200 simultaneous map users – everyone from Network Rail staff to train and freight operators, commuters, leisure travellers and enthusiasts. I don’t have statistics for the number of unique map users per day, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t well upwards of a few thousand.

Until next time – probably in a few weeks – enjoy the new maps and please, please keep your emails pouring in!

// Peter