Today’s the day. The new version of OpenTrainTimes is now live!

This release has been many months in the making, because there are days where the last thing I want to do is spend 8 hours at work talking about the railway, followed by four hours of writing code to crunch data about the railway.

I’ve also been busy working with a number of people to help get their great ideas off the ground, plus talking to people in the industry about what the ‘next steps’ are.

Here’s the summary of what’s new.

Track Diagrams

I’ve been hard at work drawing new, and extending existing diagrams:

• Hitchin to Cambridge now includes platforms 7 and 8
• Rugby to Birmingham includes signal aspects for 6xxx signals from Long Lawford Junction to Coventry
• London Victoria to East Croydon is the London Victoria – Streatham Junction map extended to include Selhurst
• St Pancras International to Thames Tunnel is an extended version of the St Pancras International – Stratford map
• Ashford International has been redrawn completely and includes data from HS1
• London Marylebone to West Ruislip/Aylesbury is the return of the former Chiltern map, but extended
• Hitchin – Stoke Tunnel is an extension of the Hitchin – Tallington map
• London Road/Plumpton to Ham Street is an extension of the Glynde – Ham Street map, which includes Lewes
• East London Line has some alterations around New Cross Gate as a result of Thameslink works
• London Paddington has returned
• Southall – Stockley Bridge is a new map which includes the lines to Heathrow Airport
• Manchester Piccadilly includes the approaches to Manchester Piccadilly, plus the through lines to Manchester Oxford Road
• North Kent East Junction to Dartford includes the lines via Woolwich Arsenal, Bexleyheath and Sidcup to Dartford
• Charing Cross/Cannon Street/London Bridge to Forest Hill is brand new
• Bethnal Green – Cheshunt via Tottenham Hale, including Enfield Town and part of the Chingford branch, is brand new
• Wakefield Westgate to Leeds makes a welcome return
• York station and the surrounding area is also brand new

Advanced Search

There’s a new advanced search function available – click the ‘Trains’ button at the top of the page. Click the ‘+’ button to add search criteria, and ‘-‘ to remove one of the criteria.

Real-time data

I’ve put in a lot of effort behind the scenes to prepare the site for real-time data. Although I could have done this several years ago, I felt my experience and knowledge was better spent helping others do great things with the data that Network Rail have released.

Most of that work is now done, and National Rail Enquiries have released their Darwin Push Port data on really good terms. I’ll be working to include this data in the site over the next few weeks.

In the mean time, I’ve integrated real-time data from Network Rail’s TRUST system, albeit at a basic level at the moment, to help fill the gap.

Bugs

There are bugs – some of the things that aren’t quite finished yet:

• Schedules should have mileage data, but I don’t have that data for every pair of TIPLOCs yet. If anyone can help, please get in touch
• Some of the ‘train ready to start’ indications on maps don’t light up correctly, and sometimes signals show a green aspect when they should show red
• When searching for schedules which have a start date of before today, sometimes the site will say the schedule wasn’t valid when it was

If you find more, please email support@opentraintimes.com with details, how to reproduce it (if you can) and, ideally, a screenshot.