Sunday rolls around again, as does summer. As a result, I’ve been spending time soaking up Vitamin D rather than working too hard. Nevertheless, this week brings you two new maps:

• The new Bournemouth – Weymouth map includes the Poole – Wool resignalling, which is taking place at the moment. This will become fully operational in the next few days
• On the Midland Mainline, the new Ambergate Junction – Meadowhall map covers Chesterfield and Sheffield – an often-requested area which I’m delighted to have nearly finished

There are a few invisible back-end changes which have also taken place to make the site more robust, but nothing too major.

So, if you’re not out in the sunshine, enjoy the maps 🙂

Sunday rolls around again, and a chance to let you know about the bugs fixed and improvements I’ve made in OpenTrainTimes over the past week.

This week’s new feature is clickable headcodes. When a headcode appears in white, you can click it and see details of the train. This isn’t completely foolproof – I’ve noticed a Hounslow Loop service be mistakenly linked to a train out of London Victoria, and linking doesn’t always carry over between train describers – but it’s a start.

And now, on to the minor things:

• Signalling on the Hertford Loop map is now fixed, and route indications show up correctly. There is now also an normal/ERTMS indication to show when ERTMS testing is taking place. Thanks to @avgeek777 for spotting this problem
• Some berths on the London Victoria map have been fixed, particularly in sidings. Thanks to one of the signallers at Victoria ASC for their help and input
• Platform numbers on the London Euston map have been fixed (thanks, Adrian), as well as a berth which was drawn upside-down (thanks, Ben)

Enjoy 🙂

Thanks largely to having a week off work in a seaside town in North Yorkshire, I’ve had plenty of free time to work on OpenTrainTimes.

Here are the important points about the release I’ve just made live:

• The maps now show correctly on Internet Explorer 9 and above – this bug took me three or four days to work out 🙁
• The site will look much better on many screens
• The London Euston – Kenton and Kenton – Tring maps are now back, and the pointwork removed at Watford Junction this weekend is reflected on the map
• The Thameslink Core map is back, with some signal aspect data (although this appears to be unreliable)
• Schedule types (WTT, VAR, STP and CAN) are now highlighted on location pages
• The “Earlier” and “Later” buttons on location pages now change the time by 1 hour, not 2
• Trains which originate and terminate at locations, where the trains pass through the location multiple times (e.g. Railhead Treatment Trains) are only shown as ‘Starts here’ or ‘Terminates here’ when they make their first or last, and not on each visit

Finally, I’m aware there have been a few problems with the data feeds that the site uses – not all of them I have control over, but I have found a number of weak areas I’ll be re-engineering over the coming weeks.

So, until next time… enjoy the maps and keep emailing!

Peter

Another month has passed by in double-quick time. I’ve had a much-needed week away from work, but now I’m back and busier than I’ve been for several years!

Still, I’ve found time to push the latest, and last, lot of updates up to the site before OpenTrainTimes 2.2 becomes properly live.

Here’s what’s new (and some people spotted a couple of them earlier in the week):

• The London Paddington map is now quicker to load, and TRTS indications work
• A few fixes to the Kings Cross – Hitchin map – nothing news-worthy
• The West Coast Mainline maps are being redone – London Euston – Harrow & Wealdstone, Harrow & Wealdstone to Tring and Tring – Wolverton are the new maps. There are some new signal indications working at Milton Keynes too, and Tring – Wolverton will be redrawn shortly as well
• A new map of Liverpool Street – Bethnal Green is up
• There’s also a new Hitchin – Peterborough map

…plus there are a number of back-end changes, invisible to the naked eye to keep the site running well.

Once the London Euston – Harrow & Wealdstone map is up to speed, I’ll be making the beta site in to the live site, then working on a load more maps and features.

It’s been a few weeks since I last updated the beta site at http://beta.opentraintimes.com, and I’ve been doing a lot of work that needs testing.

The following new bits-and-bobs are on the beta site:

• The London Paddington map has been redrawn with corrected signal aspects and about a third of the route indications available. TRTS indications are coming next.
• The Kings Cross – Hitchin map now has the Hertford Loop working
• The Kentish Town – London Blackfriars map has been updated to include the track up to Kentish Town, including fixes to some signals in the Thameslink Core area and the Tottenham North Curve on to the Tottenham and Hampstead line (Gospel Oak – Barking)
• The East London Line map has a few minor fixes and a tidier layout
• The Thatcham map has been extended and is now the Theale – Newbury map, including the freight sidings between Theale and Midgham

Just a note – your browser may have cached the older maps due to a problem on the beta server which I’m trying to fix. If this is the case and you don’t see any changes – for example, you still see a message on the Herford Loop

And as for the future – there’s a map of Oxford planned (thanks to Matt Taylor), as well as Leeds and London Liverpool Street. Watch this space!

Happy Sunday – I hope you’re not melting in the current heatwave we’re having in the UK.

I’ve just released a bunch of new things to the beta site at http://beta.opentraintimes.com/ – mostly maps:

• The Acton Wells Junction – Stratford Map includes Acton Wells Junction to Richmond, plus the West London Line down to West Brompton and beyond, as well as the entire Gospel Oak – Barking line. I predict this one might be quite popular – I’ve even included the relevant bits of the East London Line in the map!
• There is a new map of Thameslink Core from St Pancras International down to Blackfriars. This is very much a work-in-progress, but I thought I’d release it in beta early on
• A map of London Paddington, complete with signal aspects (work in progress)
• A map of Rowlands Castle/Emsworth, Havant and Bedhampton (again, a work in progress)
• The Kings Cross – Hitchin map has been reworked, and the errors around Alexandra Palace fixed
• A minor change to the Charing Cross/Cannon Street to Spa Road map around Waterloo East is now fixed
• The Marylebone to Neasden South Junction map is extended up to Aylesbury Vale Parkway with some signal aspects – a work in progress
• The Hatch End – Kings Langley map now includes the Watford – Euston DC line, used by London Overground, on the same map

Remember – if you like the site and haven’t donated so far, please consider donating something to Marie Curie Cancer Care in honour of my late father who survived cancer but sadly passed away in early June. And keep your feedback emails coming in – I absolutely love reading and replying to them!

Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate it!

Before I get in to this week’s release, there are two things I’d like to say.

First, I’d really appreciate a couple of minutes of your time to complete the How do you use OpenTrainTimes? survey. The 50 or so responses I’ve had already are somewhat surprising and have shown me that you’re all using the site differently to how I anticipated.

Second, and of reasonable importance to anyone looking at OpenTrainTimes from an Open Data perspective – I’m working on a GTFS feed of train schedules. There are a couple of first attempts up at http://data.opentraintimes.com/, and I’m hoping to get a fully-validating set of data up in the next week or so.

Right, here we go with the new bits this week – just two of them:

• There’s a new map of London Waterloo – Clapham Junction – Earlsfield/North Sheen and Chiswick

– hopefully I’ll have time to extend this down to Berrylands

• Temporary Speed Restrictions can now be filtered by region – no more waiting 10 seconds for 2,000 TSRs to load!

And several bugs have been fixed too:

• Accommodation is no longer shown for non-passenger trains, so freight trains and ECS moves will no longer have 1st and Standard class seating
• The departures-only pages were accidentally showing GBTT arrival times in place of GBTT departures – this is fixed
• A few minor fixes to the King’s Langley – Wolverton and the Wolverton, Northampton, Rugby and Shilton maps

VSTP schedules are nearly ready to go live – there are a few remaining problems with the code that handles it, so I’ve held off releasing it this week.

Enjoy!

In some ways, this is a minor update, but in others (especially if you like maps!), more major. Whatever you want to call it, here’s what’s in the mid-week release:

• The Wolverton – Rugby map has been extended up to Shilton and the fringe with the West Midlands Signalling Centre on the lines up to Coventry. A couple of other miniscule bugs with missing routes have been fixed.
• URLs in the format https://www.opentraintimes.com/location/XXX/to/YYY now work and will show all trains between XXX and YYY on the current date and time
• The Feedback link now works – apologies, a previous update managed to break it!
• Differential speeds in TSRs now match the same format as the Weekly Operating Notice
• Some Javascript libraries have been updated to improve compatibility with certain browsers

There’s other cool stuff in the pipeline which I’ll be working on over the next few days. I’m also at the FutureEverything Innovation Challenge in Manchester this weekend – if you’re there, come say hello!

It’s Sunday, which means I’m at the end of several hours of coding. OpenTrainTimes 2.1.3 has been unleashed with one new feature and several bug-fixes:

• The Schedule Validity calendar has returned – when you’re looking at a schedule, click the ‘Functions’ button and select ‘Show validity calendar’
• Trains that call more than once (for example, where a train calls at Barnes, runs via Hounslow and calls at Barnes again later) now appear correctly in a location page
• TSR information has been updated and now looks more like the data in the Weekly Operating Notice
• TOC codes are now shown in Working Timetable (WTT) mode when showing only arrivals or departures
• Castle Yard (Northampton) is now included on the Wolverton – Rugby map

I’ve taken the opportunity to fix a couple of things mid-week, and also launch a surprise new map:

• Sharnbrook Junction is now correctly drawn on the Bedford – Kentish Town map
• New signalling diagram – there’s a new map of Bletchley – Bedford (Marston Vale), complete with level crossings, signal aspects and routes
• Internet Explorer 10 compatibility has been improved slightly and the feedback button has been fixed on IE10
• Ledburn Junction and Bourne End Junction on the Kings Langley – Wolverton map had some berths accidentally removed – these have now been put back
• Minor updates – the TD Status page now shows the train describers at Glasgow and Thrumpton
• Willesden Junction now has two berths on platform 4, as trains can reverse there

Enjoy!