Every train, one day: the whole country, as it ran
Every train in Britain, running across the map just as it did on the day you pick. Press play, drag the clock, choose a date, and hover over a dot to see which train it is.
- From
- To
- Now
- Finished
Click a train and its whole day's route lights up, with where it started, where it was going, the booked times (a +1 or -1 means the day after or before), and how late it was running at that moment. Each dot is a real train. We place it between its last two reports from the signalling feed and move it along the track between them at a steady pace. The feed reports in whole minutes, so a dot can be up to a minute off, and a train that stops reporting disappears until it reports again. Express means a class 1 headcode, local a 2 or 9, freight 4 to 8, and other is empty stock, light engines and the rest. Northern Ireland has no movement feed, so those trains run from Translink's timetable and departure boards. Times are local. The whole day is one download of about 4 MB, and after that it all happens in your browser.
Sources
- Network Rail open data: the TRUST train-movement feed, every report of every train that day (Network Rail open data licence)
- OpenStreetMap: the track the trains are routed over (ODbL)
- Translink: the Northern Ireland timetable and departure boards (OGL)
- Natural Earth: the coastline (public domain)