What’s new – 28th May 2017

Although it feels like we’ve been slow to churn out new maps, you’d not think it if you looked back at progress over the last fortnight.

We’ve just made this week’s release live. In it, you’ll find the new Southampton map covering Worting Junction (now on the slightly extended Esher to Basingstoke map) to Hinton Admiral and filling in our coverage on the Hinton Admiral to Weymouth map. The West of England map has been extended too, and covers Grateley, Andover and Overton up to Worting Junction, plus Dean, Mottisfont & Dunbridge and Romsey to both Eastleigh and Redbridge.

The keener eyed amongst you will note that the Southampton map is drawn with London at the right and Bournemouth on the left. We’re in the process of revising how we draw maps of the routes out of Waterloo – our original plan several years ago is proving difficult for trains out of Waterloo, which is the only terminus in London that we consider to be in the lower-left quadrant of a fictitious circle around London. We are planning to switch the direction of the other maps, but we need to write some software to correctly realign all the elements. So, for now, please accept our apologies!

In other news, the Exeter and Westbury maps have the missing signals between the maps added.

We’ve also fixed route indications on the Darlington map, which should now show correctly for all trains entering and leaving the south side of the station.

Everything else is minor and not worth calling out individually. If you’ve reported a problem to support@opentraintimes.com, you should have had an email when the problem has been investigated and/or fixed. If you need to report an issue, it’s best by email – we can keep track of it, rather than trying to pick up potential issues from Facebook, Twitter, email and the blog!

Until next time, enjoy the Bank Holiday!

What’s new – 14th May 2017

Another Sunday is upon us, and having looked back at the last fortnight, it doesn’t seem like there’s much going on from a casual glance. But we’re hard at work on some other projects with train operators to bring an industry-strength version of OpenTrainTimes to operational staff. If you work in the industry and want to see how we can help you bring greater situational awareness to your operations, please get in touch!

We’ve had many requests to join up the Westbury and Exeter maps, covering Tiverton Parkway and Taunton, so we’ve extended the Exeter map for you! We’ve also launched our 100th map – this time of the Sunderland area, controlled by one of the Tyneside IECCs. This joins up with the Newcastle map and covers the Tyne & Wear Metro to South Hylton, and down to Hartlepool.

We’ve also fixed a very subtle bug which caused train schedules not to be properly updated from 25th April to 9th May. The problem was due to corrupt data we received, and we’ve done a thorough investigation in to what happened and how to fix it.

The next update will be in a fortnight’s time – hopefully with our Warrington area map finished, plus some of the smaller, more detailed maps for suburban parts of the railway.

What’s new – 1st May 2017

There isn’t a big update this time unfortunately – it’s hard to justify sitting in a cottage in North Yorkshire doing work when you could be out having fun – which is exactly what’s been happening! However, we have some significant things that have just gone live on the site.

  • You can now search for locations and find the right map instantly! No more having to remember which map has Long Buckby on it – just click on the Maps link, enter a station name in the "Jump to a location" box, and click the "Show map" link to go straight there. We’re still working out how to make it such that you can click on the location and it’ll jump to the map – but we wanted to release this feature early since it’s been requested many times
  • The last ten maps you’ve viewed on a device are now shown in the "Recently used maps" part of the maps page. The last map you visited is at the top, with the nine previous ones beneath it. Useful when you need to refer to several maps during the day
  • The route-based listing of maps is now tidied and the maps in each route are now hidden. Don’t panic – clicking on "East Midlands" or any of the other routes on the maps page will bring up the familiar map listing
  • And finally, the Romford to Ingatestone and Billericay map now reflects the changed track layout at Shenfield, which will be in passenger use soon. Further signals on this map will also now show a signal aspect

Minor things, worthy of a mention but not a fanfare, include Ilkeston station being added to the East Midlands maps, platform numbers fixed at Preston, route indications and Lea Bridge station added to the Bethnal Green to Chingford, Enfield Town and Cheshunt map and some signals on the East Coastway map being put in the right place.

We’re still hard at work in the lab, working on new maps, enhancements to existing maps and the next big thing. All our maps are drawn by hand during non-working hours, and we think they’re the best darned looking maps out there! We always want to bring you more, but we have to go to bed sometimes…

Until next time, stay safe!