It’s a day later than anticipated, but there’s a good reason. We’ve been hard at work on the site and ran out of time yesterday evening – we’ve managed to get 51 individual tasks sorted out, which is more than we planned!

First, the important bits. We have three brand new maps and one updated map:

• The Wilmslow map extends our coverage up from Crewe to Wilmslow, with route indications as far as Wilmslow
• The Macclesfield map joins up with the Stoke-on-Trent map at Kidsgrove and reaches all the way up to Levenshulme, north of Stockport, with route indications from north of Prestbury, including Edgeley Junction and Stockport
• The Ely to Norwich map covers the route through Thetford wth signals and route indications and will join up with the Norwich map, which we’re currently working on
• The West Ealing to Airport Junction and Heathrow map extends the previous map of the area through Southall and Hanwell and West Ealing to Ealing Broadway and London Paddington

We’ve also had a blitz on the bugs and issues you’ve raised over the past weeks, so hopefully we’re now on top of things. Just as a reminder – you can get in touch with us at support@opentraintimes.com if you spot a problem with a map, and we’ll look in to it for you.

So, that’s it for another fortnight. We’re going to be taking a short break and will be back with the next release in three or so weeks time.

Happy New Year! Over the festive period, we’ve been hard at work updating several maps as a result of infrastructure changes, and we’ve just made these changes live. There wasn’t enough time to get very many bug-fixes put in place, but we’ll be working on those next.

Here are the updates:

• The new Cardiff Central to Bridgend map covers the newly-resignalled Cardiff Central area west to Bridgend. The Vale of Glamorgan route will be coming in a later release, as well as the other routes in the area
• On the London Bridge map has been updated with the Down Sussex Slow line open, and the 8 Down line taken out-of-use
• At London Paddington, we’ve updated the map to show the changes to platforms 12 and 13, plus we’ve extended the map to cover up to Ealing Broadway and added the link to the new Crossrail depot
• The West Drayton to Twyford map has been updated to show the a new turnback siding and provision for stabling sidings at Maidenhead

We’ve also upgraded our infrastructure to cope with the growing number of visitors to the site daily, so 2017 should see an even more robust service!

Some of us aren’t fans of winter – it’s too dark and grey for too long. But looking on the bright side, it’s the perfect opportunity to keep OpenTrainTimes up-to-date with new maps and fixes!

This time, we have two items of note.

• First, as a result of a request from a regular user of the map, the Purley to Tattenham Corner and Caterham map now contains route indications – although some aren’t provided in enough detail from Three Bridges to be able to show them all at Purley.
• Secondly, still on the Southern region, we have a brand new map of Tonbridge (exc.) to Hastings (exc.), which fills in the gap between the Brighton Main Line and the East Coastway line. This route is signalled at the north from Tonbridge (although curiously Ashford controls Tonbridge station) with signals prefixed ‘PE’, fringing with Robertsbridge at the single-line between Wadhurst and Stonegate, and the southern end from Bopeep Junction.

We’re also hard at work on the Wembley Freight map, which is hugely complicated but looking impressive, and for Christmas, a new map of Cardiff Central, plus updates to the Great Western maps and London Bridge.

And as always, there are numerous small issues fixed:

• On the Swindon map, missing routes from signals SW1169, SW6517 and SW6535 have been added
• There are now links between the Guildford and Epsom maps
• Some of the berths on the Crewe map weren’t updating for signals CE137, and some of the signals controlled from Basford Hall
• The oversize Romford to Ingatestone and Billericay map has been trimmed down to size so that it fits neatly in the window
• Some of the TVM430 marker boards on the High Speed 1 map were pointing away from, rather than toward, the map
• The Horley to Hassocks map was missing a signal on platform 2 at Haywards Heath, causing some trains terminating there from the south to disappear
• Newcourt station now appears on the West of England map
• The Train Ready to Start (TRTS) indicators at Pitsea on the London Fenchurch Street to Shoeburyness map

There are other fixes, but if I were to list them all out here, you’d lose interest.

So, until next time – enjoy watching the trains!

// Peter

It’s a couple of days later than planned, but we have a whole heap of changes on the site which have just gone live.

The headlines this time:

• Our coverage of the Great Eastern Main Line has increased with the Marks Tey (exc. t0 Harwich, Walton and Clacton map. An extension to Ipswich is in the planned for the near future
• The Crewe map now has full route coverage where the data is available
• The western-most parts of the Swindon and Didcot Parkway map have been lit up with route indications, with Didcot Parkway itself planned for the coming weeks
• The Bournemouth to Weymouth map has route indications on the area controlled by Basingstoke ASC – the signals in the ‘PW’ area
• The Worplesdon to Portsmouth Harbour map now shows route indications and signals in the area controlled by Havant ASC
• The signals at Salisbury on the West of England map are now showing correctly

However, nobody’s perfect and there are always a lot of smaller fixes. Some maps have been linked together where these links were missing, spelling mistakes have been corrected, mispositioned crossovers and missing pointwork.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be preparing for the Christmas works around London Bridge for the Thameslink Programme, the recontrol of Cardiff PSB and Crossrail works between Westbourne Park and Maidenhead. There’s also work to be done complete the sizeable Wembley Freight map, as well as tackle some other areas of the country by popular request.

So, until next time – enjoy the new maps and feel free to get in touch with any problems by sending an email to support@opentraintimes.com.

If you saw the number of hours I spent working on OpenTrainTimes each week, you’d wonder how on earth I managed to have a full-time job and a busy social life. Sometimes I wonder too – which is why it’s time to change tack.

OpenTrainTimes Ltd. is now offering consultancy and software development services to the rail industry based on over 20 years of hands-on technology experience, including:

• Customised route maps – specifically for your line of route, a huge benefit for front-line staff to give customer information, and control room staff to provide focused analysis
• Full detail of freight trains – available only to railway operators but giving you full visibility of all trains running on the network
• Data analysis services – from performance and statistical analysis to data augmentation and integration
• Software development – including proof-of-concept work to show the art of the possible, and de-risk future system build
• Bespoke consultancy – requirements capture and validation, system design, integration, architecture and just about anything else railway technology-related

Drop us a email at hello@opentraintimes.com to discuss your requirements.

Before we cover the list of new things this week, an apology. All the times on the website for trains today are one hour out from reality due to a straightforward, but irritating code problem. We’re hoping that come April 2017, we’ll have a new version of the website up and running, so we’re not going to fix it. It should only affect trains today, but we’re going to keep an eye on things.

Anyway, we’ve been ridiculously busy over the last fortnight, seemingly working all hours to bring you two brand new maps:

• The Bromsgrove map covers the route from Five Ways, near Birmingham New Street, all the way Cheltenham Spa. This route is currently being re-signalled and re-controlled so there aren’t any service trains on it yet, but you can watch the signalling being testing for the moment
• The Fife Circle map covers North Queensferry, the entire route via Burntisland and Cowdenbeath up to Ladybank and Springfield

As always, there are bug fixes and support emails to get through – we’re working hard to get them down to a manageable level, but some queries are taking time. This time, we’ve fixed numerous smaller issues such as missing shunt signals or routes, but there are three important ones:

• Some subtle errors crept in whilst we were drawing maps, which meant that a number of signal and route indications never appeared, and some platforms appeared incorrectly. We’ve fixed this so it won’t happen again, and you might notice extra route indications on your favourite map
• A long-standing and very difficult to identify problem on the Stoke-on-Trent map meant that signals around Stoke-on-Trent station (for the technically minded, on the STOKEJCN SSI) weren’t showing correctly, but we’ve patched around this
• Several minor fixes to the GWML maps as far as Reading, including missing and mis-positioned points

The next release will be in three weeks time as there’s a holiday by the seaside to be had. Hopefully the Wembley Freight maps will be ready by then!

There is no doubt that, if I quit my day-job and work on OpenTrainTimes full time, I’ll still not be able to keep up with the number of emails coming in and requests for maps! Please don’t stop sending them in though – every one sent to support@opentraintimes.com is logged and queued so it’s not lost.

This fortnight has been particularly busy, and we have a brand new map to announce – Westbury! After many weeks of work, it’s now complete, covering Westbury to Castle Cary and Salisbury, joining up with the West of England map.

Other more significant map changes:

• The Nottingham area map has been updated to include the newly resignalled route from Lowdham to Newark Flat Crossing
• The Gourock area map now shows the minor changes which took place a couple of weeks ago, introducing some new signals and removing disused sidings

We’ve also made some changes to the schedule pages:

• The miles and chains column, which was never being populated as the database behind this is immense, has now been removed
• The slightly confusing ‘more…’ link at the top of the page has now been renamed "Technical information", but contains the same data
• Where a train has called or passed a location, the platform number will be updated to show whether or not the train used the scheduled platform
• When sharing a freight or engineering train schedule on social media, the link title is much cleaner

Other smaller fixes and changes:

• There are more inter-map links active, which makes it easier to jump between adjacent maps
• Some signals at Banbury were never displaying an aspect, which was down to missing code to actually wire them up!
• Feniton station on the West of England map was missing a signal controlling movements toward Exeter, which has now been added along with two signals controlling movements toward Yeovil Junction
• Some ground position lights on the Merseyrail Northern map have now been repositioned and the software problem which mis-positioned them fixed
• CKB3 signal on the approach to Dorking has been renamed CBK4 as it is in reality
• Routes at Effingham Junction and the surrounding areas are now shown
• Some minor fixes at Woking – the route from 1204 signal has been fixed so it shows correctly a route toward 1209 signal, not toward 170 signal and some of the sidings which don’t exist are now removed
• Pirbright Junction is now correctly shown as a flyover, not a diveunder, and trains between 194 and 190, and 396 and 392 signals now appear as two signals were missing
• Preston now shows its station name rather than being left blank as an exercise in identifying stations

And that’s it. We’re busy working on the next maps – of the freight yards and sidings at Wembley, the newly re-signalled Bristol Parkway area and a couple of surprises!

Last week’s release didn’t happen. There are times in life where there’s simply too much to do, and you need to take a bit of time out and have some fun! The past fortnight has been that, so we decided to delay the release rather than deploy it in a perfunctory style.

We’ve just deployed the updated code to the site, with the following points of note:

• With the new Derby map, we’ve now completed the Midland Mainline route from St Pancras all the way to Sheffield! The map will be extended over the coming weeks to fill in the gaps toward Burton-on-Trent and Stenson Junction
• The long-standing bug with signals L155 and L148 on the London Bridge map has been fixed, which was an issue with the train describer rather than our maps
• Some misdrawn signals on the Merseyrail Northern Line map have been fixed
• Cricklewood Sidings on the London St Pancras International to Harpenden map have been added, although there’s little train describer coverage
• On the Norwood Junction and London Victoria to East Croydon maps, we’ve corrected a number of small mistakes in what is a very complicated area. We’re not going to list them all here, but if you spot any further issues, please get in touch!
• Some maps now have fringes between signalling areas indicated on them, such as the East London Line and London Bridge maps
• At Wimbledon, none of the trains signalled by London Victoria ASC were showing up, which we’ve fixed

We’re still hard at work on the Westbury map, and we’ve started a detailed map of the non-passenger parts of Wembley. Those will be out in the next few weeks – fingers crossed – and hopefully we’ll have the new version of the site up and running for Christmas!

Until next time, enjoy the new map of Derby!

Despite the mixed weather over the last fortnight, we’ve been busy (but when are we not?) working on the site and answering emails. This, coupled with some really exciting new developments, means it may take a little longer than usual for us to reply to emails or fix map issues, but sit tight and we’ll definitely be in touch.

We’re getting ready to launch our Railway Systems Consultancy, offering professional services to the railway industry. Drop us a mail at hello@opentraintimes.com if you’re interested in finding out about our design, integration, troubleshooting and bespoke consultancy services.

Back on to this week’s updates. First off, to satisfy the huge number of people who ask for new maps, there are four under development right now:

• Wembley Freight will cover the numerous freight siding at Wembley on the West Coast Main Line
• Derby is going to bridge the gap on our Midland Main Line maps, covering the Derby station area and some of the line to Tamworth
• London Victoria (Southeastern) will add the platforms on the other side of London Victoria and join up with several other maps to give better coverage of Southeastern’s services
• Westbury extends our coverage of the Berks and Hants line to Westbury and further afield

Each of the maps is hand-drawn and anything from quite simple to ridiculously complex. It takes a number of hours to analyse the data we have available, work out where gaps are, lay out and finally draw the maps. From the feedback we’ve received, we know the maps are hugely popular and a viable alternative to other industry systems. Talk to us if you’re part of the rail industry and would like to engage us commercially to build a customised map of certain routes or stations – we’re happy to help!

This week, we have a whole heap of changes and updates for you:

• On the North Kent map, we’ve added route indications at Dartford, Sidcup and Lewisham, and over the next weeks we’ll be working on adding more
• The Norwood Junction map has an additional crossover by TL600 signal at Sydenham, which was missing
• One of the bridges at Windmill Bridge Junction on the London Victoria to East Croydon map was mis-drawn
• A number of fixes on the Hildenborough to Ashford International map – one of the platforms at Headcorn was drawn on the wrong side of the track…
• If you’re using the Merseyrail North Line map, there are now additional ground position light (GPL) signals and route indications
• The Liverpool Street to Romford map was missing a signal at Liverpool Street, which we’ve added back in
• Route indications from the Watford Workstation at Wembley Mainline are now on the London Euston to Wembley Central and Wembley Central to Tring maps for the area around Wembley.
• The North London Line map now has some routes showing on the West London Line, and the soon-to-be-reinstated depot connections at North Pole (plus routes) have been added
• At Redhill, the track layout has been revised and route indications added
• There are now route indications at Wivelsfield for the line to Lewes
• A few minor errors are fixed on the London Bridge map – a berth for signal TL1066 has been added, the ‘train ready to start’ indications on platforms 8 and 9 are now fixed, and some missing signal aspects have been added as well as a route at Cannon Street redrawn which showed when it shouldn’t have done
• New pointwork at Chislehurst has been added
• Track occupation indications now appear as a yellow dotted line when the track is occupied, and don’t appear when the track isn’t. These indications are only in a few places on the maps – such as the platforms at Leicester as well as Cannon Street and Charing Cross
• Route indications around Acton Wells and Bollo Lane Junctions have been fixed, as some were showing incorrectly
• Substantial rework of the Windsor Lines map has seen signal aspects replaced with route indications, as the indications we receive are routes not signals. This was the cause of many signals never returning to danger after a train passes them
• Southend Victoria now has route indications around the station area

Phew. Our next release is due in a couple of weeks, and there’s still lots to do. Keep sending in your emails letting us know what you like and what you don’t like – we really love reading them!

This weekend, London Cannon Street to London Bridge is recontrolled to a new workstation at Three Bridges ROC. We’ve spent quite some time updating the London Bridge area map ready for these changes, including even more route indications toward the Low Level platforms, and track and route indications around Cannon Street.

We’ve just made this revised map live earlier than planned so you can see the signalling being commissioned, and also because we have a massive number of fixes and enhancements for you this week! Here’s the list:

• The Hillington West to Gourock and Wemyss Bay map has dozens of new route indications to show where trains have been routed
• The Cricklewood and Hendon to Acton Wells map now has limited signal and route indications. Some of the signals are semaphore signals rather than colour light signals – we’d planned on animating the semaphores so they showed ‘on’ and ‘off’ correctly, but since there are so few semaphore signals that we have status data for, we decided to spend our time elsewhere
• Two missing berths on the up lines on the Nuneaton to Rugeley Trent Valley map have been added, so trains will no longer disappear when crossing between signalling centres
• There are lots of fixes to the Grove Park to Bromley North and Hildenborough map: we’ve fixed the layout at the Marshalling Yard North at Tonbridge, added the MPV depot, AD2063 shunt signal, moved AD117 signal to its correct position, fixed the berth which always shows XXXX at Sevenoaks, removed the ‘Last sent’ berths as they never showed anything, added a route from AD66 in to platform 2 and L322 to Grove Park,
• Some signals on various maps were stuck on green. We can’t see why this is, so we’ve set them back to danger and we’ll monitor the situation. It’s likely that we’ve suffered from an outage to our feeds from Network Rail at some point and are missing data
• On maps with data from the IECCs at Ashford, any berth shared between two signals (a dual berth) never displayed any indication. We’ve put separate berths in and fixed this small problem on several of the maps
• At Selhurst on the London Victoria to East Croydon map, T76 signal was shown in the wrong direction
• We extended the Ingatestone to Hatfield Peverel map to cover up to the fringe with Colchester PSB, including the Braintree and Sudbury branches from Witham and Marks Tey respectively
• The Didcot Parkway to Banbury map had a few issues with position light signals, which we’ve fixed

It’s been an incredibly busy fortnight. Our new ticketing system for support@opentraintimes.com is proving popular and really helping us keep track of the stack of emails coming in asking for help. It will also let you log in to see the latest updates on any bugs you raise!

We’ve nearly finished the revised London Bridge map, ready for the resignalling work over the August Bank Holiday, and we’re hard at work on some other projects for the rail industry. Over the next couple of months, we’ll start to make our consultancy and technical services available. More about that in another update – you’re anticipating the changes and fixed this week, aren’t you? Here they are!

• Rail Operations Group trains will now appear in the schedule pages with their real headcodes! In the coming weeks, we’ll be changing the maps so that their services also appear on the maps with their real headcodes
• We have a brand new map of the Berks & Hants line from Southcote Junction to Heywood Junction (exc.), covering the route through Newbury and Bedwyn down to just before Westbury – which will be coming in a later map
• On the schedule location pages, the schedule type (WTT, VAR, STP and CAN) buttons didn’t work. This appears to have been due to a code upgrade in the past and wasn’t caught by our testing – but we’ve fixed it so you can filter out the types of schedules you don’t want
• On the Liverpool Street to Romford map, we’ve added Aldersbrook Sidings near Ilford, changed the map to reflect the plain line past the loop at Romford and removed Mile End Yard, Chadwell Heath and Goodmayes Up sidings
• The icon for a TOPS 2000-reported departure wasn’t showing the same as the key, so we’ve updated the key to show the correct icon
• On the Esher to Basingstoke map, some signals near Winchfield were missing, which caused trains to disappear. These are now back on the map
• The Chilterns map was missing some signals between Aylesbury and Little Kimble, and between Haddenham and Thame Parkway and Princes Risborough, which we’ve added in
• Trains weren’t showing up in platform 15 on the Edinburgh map, so we’ve fixed this so that trains actually do show up
• On the revamped Oxford map, signal ME364 was missing, which we’ve added in
• Two signals were positioned on the wrong lines on the Leyland to Lancaster map, which we’ve corrected

Until next time, enjoy the site!