Has anyone in the UK ever tried to create a website to allow compilation of various 'spots' or numbers of trains/locos spotted around the country into a database for reference by those searching out a particular unit/loco/train type?
There's an excellent Dutch site called:
http://www.somda.nl/
which is something quite brilliant: it allows all spotters to input daily their 'spots' or 'cops' for the day for any and all locations countrywide, and saves it on an instantly updated database. Then if I want to see where unit 'xxx' was last seen, and on what train, I can do a search for it, or I can search for a train headcode and see what units were last spotted running that service.
For example in this country it might work as:
170510 2M11 SHR F +5
170511 2M11 SHR R +5
Which would translate to unit 170510 and 511 seen at Shrewsbury, 510 on the Front (F) and 511 on the Rear (R), running 5 minutes late on headcode 2M11. There's no need to input the time the train was seen, as the whole timetable is in the database and it just looks at the headcode, and the location, and assumes correct time unless a delay is added. If three or more units are coupled together, the middle ones take the letter 'M'.
The major snag I can see in the UK is that headcodes are not widely known by most - unlike in the Netherlands where the timetables all have the 'Train Number' above each time column. If this were solvable, or an online database accessible with that info, it could possibly work.
There's an excellent Dutch site called:
http://www.somda.nl/
which is something quite brilliant: it allows all spotters to input daily their 'spots' or 'cops' for the day for any and all locations countrywide, and saves it on an instantly updated database. Then if I want to see where unit 'xxx' was last seen, and on what train, I can do a search for it, or I can search for a train headcode and see what units were last spotted running that service.
For example in this country it might work as:
170510 2M11 SHR F +5
170511 2M11 SHR R +5
Which would translate to unit 170510 and 511 seen at Shrewsbury, 510 on the Front (F) and 511 on the Rear (R), running 5 minutes late on headcode 2M11. There's no need to input the time the train was seen, as the whole timetable is in the database and it just looks at the headcode, and the location, and assumes correct time unless a delay is added. If three or more units are coupled together, the middle ones take the letter 'M'.
The major snag I can see in the UK is that headcodes are not widely known by most - unlike in the Netherlands where the timetables all have the 'Train Number' above each time column. If this were solvable, or an online database accessible with that info, it could possibly work.