It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written about the site – the day-job has to take priority and the number of days when I want to come home and spend more time wrangling over railway data has dropped somewhat.

Rest assured, the site is still under development and I’m working on fixing bugs and compatibility issues before I start work on the next set of enhancements.

It’s been such great weather over the past week, and I’ve been so busy in my day-job that I’ve had little time to work on the site this week. However, I’ve managed to get the Fenchurch Street – Shoeburyness map finished.

There won’t be much happening over the next few weeks, as it’s likely to continue to be sunny – but I’ll try to get a new map every fortnight or so.

I missed the Sunday planned release date due to a family bereavement – I’ve had too many of those over the past year. However, it has been somewhat comforting to sit and concentrate on drawing maps.

So, a little later than planned, the Liverpool Street to Romford map and Rugby to Birmingham map are both now live.

Coming up next, the Paddington map will be returning, as well as Rugby and the Trent Valley.

Enjoy!

It’s another Bank Holiday weekend, which means an extra lie-in – unless you’re up at 8am in preparation for walking the tunnel between Rotherhithe and Wapping.

This week’s updates have been released on to the site:

• The Leeds to Harrogate map is now live
• Due to popular request, there’s a new Hitchin – Cambridge map, which is work-in-progress. If you can help out with the Cambridge end of the map, please get in touch
• The East London Line map has made a welcome return, slightly redrawn and extended to Brockley

A few other minor changes have gone in, such as mislabelled berths – and there are a handful more to go in during this week.

Once again, thank you to everyone who has given feedback. In the pipeline for the next few weeks are things like the return of the Liverpool Street and Marylebone maps, and more real-time data.

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