The Railway Atlas
These are the big pictures behind the crossing forecasts, made from the same open data. How the railway grew and shrank over two hundred years, what runs on it today, and where the gates are down the longest. Every page shows where its facts came from and says how sure we are.
Stations and people: a complete history
Start in 1825 and run forward: every station that was open in the year you pick, drawn over where people lived that year, from every census since 1801. Underneath, how far the typical person was from a station, and how that changed as the railway came and went.
Every train, one day: the whole country, as it ran
Pick a day and watch every train in Britain run across the map, just as it did that day. Press play, scrub the clock, and click a train to see where it was going and how late it was.
Rise and fall: two centuries of railway, year by year
Watch the railway grow and shrink over two centuries. Pick a year and the map shows every line that was open. Click a line to see when it opened, when it closed, and where we found that out.
The busiest crossings today: where the road waits longest
Which crossings keep the road waiting longest? Every crossing coloured by how long the barriers are expected to be down today, and the hundred busiest ranked underneath. It's the same forecast that runs the live pages.