It seems like ages since I last posted here, but I’ve not been sitting idle.

OpenTrainTimes 2.1.1 went live a few minutes ago, and here are the changes:

• From/To filtering – you can now search for trains that have come from, or go to, another location. Click the “Trains” link at the top of the page, then click “By location, date and time”
• The Bedford – Kentish Town map now extends up to the fringe with Leicester and include Sharnbrook Junction
• Allowances for trains are now shown correctly where half-minutes are involved
• Facility icons are now shown in schedule pages – you can see Sleeper trains, catering and reservation statuses
• West Coast Mainline maps have been extended up past Rugby and several bugs have been fixed thanks to a few eagle-eyed people – thank you!
• VSTP schedules will be appearing soon – there’s a lot of work that’s gone in to integrating the functionality for them in to the site, and I’m hoping to make another minor release before the end of the week

Until next time – enjoy 🙂

Hello, Sunday – it’s time to launch the changes, fixes and improvements!

This week’s highlights:

• Signalling diagrams now include Kings Cross (in beta). From around 11am on Monday 28th January, the Hatch End – Kings Langley, Kings Langley – Wolverton, Wolverton – Rugby and Acton Wells Junction – Stratford maps will be showing signal aspects and routes set from signals.
• Freight schedules will be back on the site from Tuesday 29th January, although train reporting numbers (headcodes) won’t be available for reasons of confidentiality. Freight movements will also appear on the signalling maps, with an anonymous placeholder to replace the headcode.
• RTPPM statistics, as pointed out by a couple of people, were incorrect and were counting late trains twice. This is now fixed.

Looking forwards, updates to the site will be every fortnight for the foreseeable future – a week isn’t quite long enough to get everything done. To whet your appetite, here’s what’s on the cards:

• Signalling diagrams – I’m hoping to extend the WCML maps up to Coventry and Nuneaton, as well as adding Kings Cross and parts of the ECML, and Waterloo
• Faster timetable lookups – at the moment, I’m putting a lot of work in to making timetable and schedule lookups faster. It’s a big job, but one that underpins several other things I have planned
• Real-time train information – discussions are under-way to get predictions and actual arrival/departures on the site.

That’s it for now – the next update to the site will be on Sunday 10th February!

First, an apology. Some of the real-time functionality on the site broke several times this week, and I’ve spent a chunk of development time looking to exactly what happened and how to prevent it happening in the future. I’m reasonably confident I’ve fixed it, but time will tell.

This week, I’ve been working on statistics. The statistics page now has three pie charts:

• Real-time PPM shows the number of trains across the network which are on-time, late or very late. This data comes straight from Network Rail.
• Right Time shows the number of trains which arrived at their destination early, or within 59 seconds of their schedule arrival time. This is calculated within OpenTrainTimes.
• Cancellations shows a breakdown of the reasons for cancellations across the entire network.

The stats are reset at 2am each day, so this evening, the cancellation statistics won’t reflect reality until tomorrow morning.

Admittedly, it’s not much – but given I started a new job this week, you can probably forgive me.

In the coming weeks, I’m hoping to expand the amount of real-time statistics on the site, as well as import historical data so you can look at past performance.

Let me know what you think.

Happy New Year to you all! We’re back with another Sunday night update.

There’s not much to report this week – I have a few features still in development and, rather than releasing them in to the wild right now, I want to wait and see how they perform in staging this week.

This week’s updates are:

• The slippy map is using Ordnance Survey data, as well as data from OpenStreetMap until I can get railway network data from Network Rail
• You can now link to specific locations on the map – click ‘Permalink’ and copy and paste the URL from your browser
• The signalling maps and slippy map load properly on Windows 8/Internet Explorer 10 – although the ‘feedback’ button is still incorrectly positioned. If anyone knows how I can fix this, please get in touch
• A few hundred missing location names have been entered in to the database, so you shouldn’t see trains to CLPHMJ1 any more
• Signalling maps now show the number of people viewing the map at the same time as you

Until next week, have fun and keep sending in your feedback!

There are two important updates to the site this week.

First, the Kings Langley – Wolverton map includes the new signalling being commisioned at Bletchley over Christmas. The fast lines are due to be back in operation on Thursday 27th December, and the slow lines on Monday 31st December.

Second, the the Wolverton – Northampton – Rugby map now includes Rugby station.

As usual, there are a bunch of minor things that I’ve fixed based on feedback:

• Signalling maps are fixed in Internet Explorer 9
• The (more…) links on the PPM Detail pages now work on Apple devices
• Routes and track circuits aren’t displayed on signalling where the information isn’t yet available
• The ‘help’ buttons now work again
• The globe icon on the front page now works
• Some missing signals have been added to maps

Over the Christmas break, I’ll be working on more real-time statistics and historical data – but not until after I’ve eaten plenty of turkey, Brussels sprouts and Christmas pudding!

Happy Christmas!

The last week has flown by once again. The fact that there are only four items of note is no reflection on the amount of work I seem to have done – drawing out maps and sanity-checking them takes ages.

• The Wolverton to Hillmorton Junction map is now live. This covers the direct and ‘via Northampton’ routes up to Hillmorton Junction. Rugby will be appearing next week
• A new-look map of Great Britain’s railway lines, based on updated OpenStreetMap data
• The Real-Time PPM pages have been very slightly tweaked to make them display better on smaller screens
• You can now search for a headcode or schedule UID without having to select which one you’re searching for

Enjoy!

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.