Things have been quiet over the last couple of months, so it’s time to give you an update and tell you what’s happening.

Keeping the public version of OpenTrainTimes entirely free is not easy. Working long hours to bring in the money to cover rent, bills and the occasional holiday takes a lot of time and energy. The sort of work I carry out isn’t a normal 9-to-5 job either – it’s impossible to leave at 5pm and not think about creative solutions for the problems you’ve discussed that day. Some days, I’m still working at 10pm to do the best possible job I can.

Occasionally, other projects come along that take up all my free time. That is precisely what’s happened over the last couple of months – I’ve been working with some very talented people on a new product which involves lots of fresh thinking and creative ideas. That project is starting to wind down again, so I’m back in the hot-seat and ready to work more on OpenTrainTimes.

Thanks to everyone who’s been in touch to ask if everything’s OK – I’m coming to the end of almost 20 days of back-to-back work after a few frantic weeks being airlifted in, metaphorically speaking, to rescue somebody else’s project.

The good news is that we have a brand new map of Bristol Parkway launching on Sunday. This gives us full coverage of the Great Western Main Line all the way from London to Bridgend. Alongside the new map, there are some fixes to the Gloucester map which we released back in June.

After Sunday’s release, it’ll be a busy week to prepare for several changes to maps as a result of engineering works over the August Bank Holiday, and we’re hoping to release the maps on Monday afternoon, ready for Tuesday morning.

And after that? You can expect more maps, more real-time information and even better insight in to how the railway’s running. There’s also lots of work going on to scale the site up so it copes with the continually increasing demand. Most of that will be invisible, but in the next few months, we’ll have some minor changes to how the website looks to allow us to roll out new features.

In summary, don’t worry – OpenTrainTimes is still open for business!