The world has changed dramatically since our last update, but we’re still here and open for business. Substantially fewer people have visited the site over the past weeks, but since we don’t rely on advertising or subscriptions, there’s no danger of us going away any time soon.

We are also offering pro bono services to the rail industry during this difficult period. If we can help you in any way, please email hello@opentraintimes.com.

Despite everything that’s going on right now, we’ve been beavering away at the site and we’ve just released our slightly late March update. Here are the highlights:

• A new map of Aston to Lichfield Trent Valley (High Level) is now live, with signal and route indications on the branch to Lichfield, and possibly unreliable indications between Aston and Duddeston and the line to Stechford due difficulties with the underlying data
• There’s also a new Strood area map, covering east of Dartford to Beltring for the route to Paddock Wood
• The Manchester Piccadilly map has been extended via Manchester Oxford Road to Deansgate, and at the south end to connect with the Macclesfield map, with route indications – where we can show them – in to Manchester Piccadilly. There are some routes listed on the map that we can’t show due to data limitations
• We’ve added signal aspect indications between Hampton-in-Arden and Adderley Park, which may be wrong for the same reasons as the Aston to Lichfield map
• We’ve migrated to a new database cluster which is substantially faster than before, but importantly easier for us to monitor and manage. You won’t notice anything different.
• Kings Lynn has a new reversing siding due to be commissioned soon. Once it is, we’ll update the map to include the signal aspect on 42 signal
• Platform numbers at Bowes Park are now correct, having been labelled incorrectly in the past
• Bury St Edmunds is now spelled correctly – as in Blackadder, not Noel
• 446 signal at Peckham Rye has been added, which was accidentally left out when we drew the map
• Our Sheffield map has been extended past Meadowhall to Barnsley, linking up with the route via Penistone to Huddersfield
• Various fixes on the Airedale and Leeds maps – signal 3961 at Shipley now shows its aspect, the Train Ready To Start (TRTS) indication at 3956 at Ilkley and Skipton are no longer permanently set ‘on’
• Finally, we’ve changed our icons very, very slightly as a result of an upgrade to one of our fonts