Another week has slipped by so quickly, and I can’t believe it’s Sunday again. Here’s what I’ve been working on this week:

• PPM Data data is now sorted correctly by PPM, and service groups are shown
• The Thameslink map now extends down to Kentish Town
• The Kings Langley – Wolverton map now covers Bletchley, Milton Keynes Central and Wolverton
• Those of you using the Opera web browser will now be able to load the signalling maps, as I’ve fixed the code that loads maps
• The Map of Great Britain’s Railways now has panning and zooming controls

Other things that are less significant:

• Sheffield now appears in the list of Train Describers
• Platform 4 at Willesden Junction is now correctly shown, and was previosuly mis-labelled as Platform 6
• Boxmoor Sidings are now shown on the Kings Langley – Wolverton map, and the Linslade and Northchurch tunnel bores are now accurate

I’m at a conference on transparency hosted by the Office of Rail Regulation on Monday 10th December. If you’re there, come find me and say hello – but regardless, please read ORR’s calls for improved access to real-time train information and consider responding to their consultation on access to National Rail Enquiries’ Darwin system.

Remember – we’re on Twitter as @opentraintimes and also on Facebook.

Until next week, enjoy the updates!

Wow, what a busy few weeks I’ve had! Two hours a day of my free time has been taken up by commuting across London to a temporary contract. Updates have therefore been a little slow, although I’ve made the best use I can of my mega-commute.

This week’s highlights:

Signalling diagrams

• Acton Wells to Stratford has been overhauled and redrawn.
• The Kings Langley to Bletchley map is now live. In the coming weeks, it’ll be extended to Milton Keynes Central
• Bedford to Elstree and Borehamwood, an extended version of the Bedford to Luton map, is now live. Some sidings are missing, which will be added soon
• The East London Line map has a few fixes at New Cross Gate, thanks to a field trip a couple of weeks ago to find out which signals are where

Statistics and Information

• Using the Real-Time Public Performance Measure (RTPPM) data from Network Rail, you can now see the current National PPM, and drill down to individual train operating company statistics. The next release will have detailed statistics on each operator by route.
• Data on Temporary Speed Restrictions in force on the network has been added. These are updated every Friday morning

As well as all of those, the site is ready for Network Rail’s release of S-Class data, where available, from train describers. When this becomes live, some of the maps will show signal aspects (red or green), routes set from signals and track circuit occupation.

Thanks to everyone who’s emailed in asking for maps of specific areas. I’m working on geographical maps, and I’m looking for volunteers to use a GPS device to record the routes of trains. The more data the better – wait for the next blog post, which will have all the juicy details.

This week has been all about maps. There are only two major updates this week:

First off is the Hatch End to Kings Langley map. Why such a small area? Simple – it’s the only part of the West Coast Main Line that’s directly under Watford Junction PSB’s control.

Next, and finally, the London Euston to Hatch End map has had substantial work and now includes the relief lines used by Southern services, and a handful of other locations in the Willesden and Wembley area. It’s a map which doesn’t fit neatly on to one page, but I’m working on ways to compress it without losing detail.

Behind the scenes, I’m been working on processing Temporary Speed Restriction (TSR) data, published weekly on Friday mornings – and beavering away at producing a richer and more colourful map of Action Wells to Stratford, with signal aspects and routes.

That’s it for another week – I’m hoping to get the TSR pages ready for next Sunday’s release, and I’m still working on ways to make the site faster as it continues to be popular. Do keep your feedback coming in, as well as suggestions for new features.

I missed the deadline for last week’s release – there were some problems that cropped up which took a few days to fix. This means there are two weeks of fixes and new features to announce!

There are two exciting things to announce this week:

• The East London Line map is now complete up to New Cross, New Cross Gate and Silwood Junction. There is little information about this in the Sectional Appendix, so I spent a few hours yesterday surveying the line by hand
• I’ve done a lot of work to restructure the timetable database, which respond more consistently. I have another set of performance improvements to put in, which I’m testing at the moment

There is more work to do on the London Euston – Hatch End map, particularly with the Relief lines, and I’ve also started on a Hatch End – Kings Langley map.

As always, most of the bugs that have been reported are now fixed:

• Switching between tabs on the schedule page is now fixed – you can click on the Facilities and Technical links again
• Pointwork at Euston and a missing crossover at Mitre Bridge Junction have been corrected – there were some missing crossovers. Thanks to Roger for noticing
• Some TD areas were shown as dead on the TD Status page. It turns out that not all train describers send heartbeats, so I’ve worked around this. There are still some areas which show a cross – these are train describers which haven’t yet been commissioned

Once again, thanks to everyone for your feedback. Having a full-time job and a busy social life means I can’t always fix all bugs every week, but I do record them all in a bug tracking database so they’re not forgotten.

It’s Sunday evening again, which means it’s time to announce the work I’ve done over the last seven days – and it’s all map-related.

Maps take an incredibly long time to get right – there’s no quick way of drawing them other than by hand. Despite this, I finished drawing Kensal Green to Hatch End on the London Euston – Hatch End map earlier today. There’s more work needed – the relief lines at Willesden aren’t correct as the documentation I have misses out signals.

As a surprise extra, I drew out the East London Line from Highbury & Islington down to Surrey Quays. Again, it requires more work, and there are a couple of bugs at Highbury & Islington, and also one at Dalston Junction.

If you know either of the routes well and would like to help out, please get in touch.

I also spent a chunk of time working on showing Temporary Speed Restrictions (TSRs). The code will be ready for next week.

This week, I’m planning on making the site quicker. I’ve tested some significant speed improvements when looking up train schedules in a test environment, and I’m looking to put these in to production very soon. The production database has more than 600,000 train schedules and 9,000,000 calling points – sorting through these can take a couple of seconds.

Once again, thank you to everyone who’s been in touch over the past week. Keep sending in your feedback and comments! If you’re on Twitter, follow @opentraintimes, and of course, at the OpenTrainTimes Facebook page.

The first of the new real-time signalling maps is now live – London Euston to Kensal Green Tunnel has just gone live. I had planned to complete the whole line up to Hatch End, where control moves over to Watford Junction PSB, but I have to sleep sometimes.

As well as this map, there are several little bugs that have been fixed, mostly cosmetic, but there are still more to fix, and new features.

I’m hoping to complete the map and add the track up to Hatch End this week, then work on Watford Junction the week after. I am also working on speeding up the site – it’s still really slow at times thanks to the popularity of the site – but I have some ideas I’m testing out.

As usual, please keep sending in your feedback either to feedback@opentraintimes.com, or through Twitter.