RealTimeTrains website

[pokemonsuper9]

not everyone knows what the operator of their train is.

That is something I completely missed, one of the things that's so obvious to me but really might not be to the average person.

 

[Class15]

It does fit with the purpose absolutely, not everyone knows what the operator of their train is. I’ve seen a couple of instances with my own eyes that demonstrate this.

There’s four operators between Newcastle and Edinburgh, and five on the stretch between Morpeth and Newcastle. (I think!) that’s a huge amount of variation possibility.

There is one Lumo train in a slightly different livery now - not that we are currently reflecting it but that’s underway.

I thought the operator showed on passenger services? Like VT for Avanti and GR for LNER

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

I thought the operator showed on passenger services? Like VT for Avanti and GR for LNER

It does, but I imagine many either don’t know what it means or disregard it. Mind you, I wasn’t aware many non enthusiasts or industry used it. Everyone I know uses National Rail’s Live Departures, or something on Trainline.

The thing is though, and I do mean this politely with acknowledgement that the team will be busy, but there is an enormous amount of wrongly liveried pictures on RTT, and no apparent attempt to correct this over the past two years, and therefore suggesting that the picture is there to help lay people know what their train is from what it looks like has less weight.

I use the allocations feature religiously for the number, but the vast majority of the pictures shown on Transport for Wales are wrong, and a fair few SWR and Northern stock are wrong too.

 

[DanNCL]

It does, but I imagine many either don’t know what it means or disregard it. Mind you, I wasn’t aware many non enthusiasts or industry used it. Everyone I know uses National Rail’s Live Departures, or something on Trainline.

On the other hand everyone I know pretty much uses it, even non enthusiasts. I don't know anyone who uses National Rail Enquiries!

The thing is though, and I do mean this politely with acknowledgement that the team will be busy, but there is an enormous amount of wrongly liveried pictures on RTT, and no apparent attempt to correct this over the past two years, and therefore suggesting that the picture is there to help lay people know what their train is from what it looks like has less weight.

I use the allocations feature religiously for the number, but the vast majority of the pictures shown on Transport for Wales are wrong, and a fair few SWR and Northern stock are wrong too.

I think in fairness livery changes can be difficult to keep up with. There have been some updates on RTT, for example 43184.

 

[12LDA28C]

I use RTT for timings of charter trains that I travel on, and have noticed that the tour mileage usually appears alongside the timings on the afternoon of the day before, eg Friday for a tour running on the Saturday. I assume these mileages come from the RailMiles website, is this correct and if so, is there any reason why the distances for the outward leg of the tour usually appear but not the return? Sometimes the mileages do not appear at all, it seems a bit hit-and-miss.

Is it down to someone having to manually input the mileages or is there some system on RTT whereby they automatically appear, imported from RailMiles?

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

I think in fairness livery changes can be difficult to keep up with. There have been some updates on RTT, for example 43184.

Hence why I’ve emailed them several times comprehensively stating that there haven’t been turquoise 175s or blue and orange 153s in service since late 2021. There are no longer any turquoise 150s although only a handful show in white - including the Northern hire ins, very bizarrely?

It’s just notable because a suggestion (which I did not agree with, let me clarify) to assign user sighted allocations was torn down as it would damage accuracy, but the pictures above the allocations aren’t accurate at all.

I’m happy to attach images of all the wrongly liveried units in their current livery to another email if it solves a potential issue of needing to prove the livery change?

 

[louis97]

I use RTT for timings of charter trains that I travel on, and have noticed that the tour mileage usually appears alongside the timings on the afternoon of the day before, eg Friday for a tour running on the Saturday. I assume these mileages come from the RailMiles website, is this correct and if so, is there any reason why the distances for the outward leg of the tour usually appear but not the return? Sometimes the mileages do not appear at all, it seems a bit hit-and-miss.

Is it down to someone having to manually input the mileages or is there some system on RTT whereby they automatically appear, imported from RailMiles?

If it isn't appearing its because there is a leg on the tour that the RailMiles system does not have data for. Tours will always be hit and miss because of the nature of the routing.

 

[Fuzzytop]

I think in fairness livery changes can be difficult to keep up with. There have been some updates on RTT, for example 43184.

That's true. Would be nice to see the new livery for LNER's IC225s now that all have been repainted, but it's not the end of the world!

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

That's true. Would be nice to see the new livery for LNER's IC225s now that all have been repainted, but it's not the end of the world!

It's not, no, and I completely accept there are far bigger issues to worry about, but I'm simply saying it's ironic seeing as we've just been told the pictures are very important in showing a non-enthusiast/industry what their train will look like

 

[12LDA28C]

If it isn't appearing its because there is a leg on the tour that the RailMiles system does not have data for. Tours will always be hit and miss because of the nature of the routing.

It often seems to happen when the tour is routed exactly the same way on the outward and return, in my experience.

If this is the case though, why would there be any missing data on the RailMiles website? It seems fairly comprehensive.

 

[Tom]

Hence why I’ve emailed them several times comprehensively stating that there haven’t been turquoise 175s or blue and orange 153s in service since late 2021. There are no longer any turquoise 150s although only a handful show in white - including the Northern hire ins, very bizarrely?

As I've indicated before, we largely rely on the operator to provide the information to us. If we get the time, which we have had very little of recently because of other work then we will go through an operator's fleet by hand and check for images. TfW is the fleet that has been through the largest amount of change in recent years and it has been hard to keep up - compare that to SWR who helpfully email us every week with what is in the paint shop who have another 4 units being updated later this week.

The system is encoded with operator-class-vehicle and it cascades following that - so the Northern hire-ins because they're not otherwise defined get the default TfW image (i.e. their new livery). As it happens, the TfW fleet has been updated in our underpinning dataset in the last few days and will be released later this week.

We also have another issue in that our usual designer is extremely backlogged with RealLife™ and OtherWork™ so we have a considerable backlog (something in the region of 100 sprites) in trying to get everything done for new liveries and new TOCs. If anyone fancies paid freelance work as a vector artist for us, then please email me directly with examples of your work and we can have a chat.

 

[louis97]

It often seems to happen when the tour is routed exactly the same way on the outward and return, in my experience.

If this is the case though, why would there be any missing data on the RailMiles website? It seems fairly comprehensive.

There is some missing data on the main lines too. Often its when a new timing point is setup that the issues start. Exactly the same route outward and return does not equal the same timing points on all routes however. Sometimes railtours might be timed at locations that normal trains are not, for example a loop.

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

TfW is the fleet that has been through the largest amount of change in recent years and it has been hard to keep up - compare that to SWR who helpfully email us every week with what is in the paint shop who have another 4 units being updated later this week.

I had noticed the SWR units were far more up to date than others! That explains why.

 

[12LDA28C]

There is some missing data on the main lines too. Often its when a new timing point is setup that the issues start. Exactly the same route outward and return does not equal the same timing points on all routes however. Sometimes railtours might be timed at locations that normal trains are not, for example a loop.

Interesting, thanks.

There are also I believe a couple of discrepancies on RailMiles where distances do not correspond to those listed in publications such as Mile By Mile, Miles and Chains and so on. I can send you details of those if required.

 

[louis97]

Interesting, thanks.

There are also I believe a couple of discrepancies on RailMiles where distances do not correspond to those listed in publications such as Mile By Mile, Miles and Chains and so on. I can send you details of those if required.

Yes that would be very useful, please PM me them. I am aware of some, so will be interesting to see if there are any others!

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

Interesting, thanks.

There are also I believe a couple of discrepancies on RailMiles where distances do not correspond to those listed in publications such as Mile By Mile, Miles and Chains and so on. I can send you details of those if required.

My biggest grope with RailMiles is there's several input options for one station depending on certain lines going into that station, but no indication of what the differences are, and only one will work with certain routes, so you have to guess.

For example, to find the mileage from London Victoria to Battersea Park, you must choose from something like VICTRIA VICTRIE VICTRIH which are all options that show when you type London Victoria in, but only one will work for your particular route and you have to guess. Infuriatingly, these failed attempts to calculate mileage when you choose the wrong one count as one of the five (or it might be ten) daily mileage checks you can do for free, I believe.

 

[Tom]

The codes in RailMiles are TIPLOC codes, and you can look them up in @pdeaves's exceedingly helpful site: http://www.railwaycodes.org.uk/crs/crs0.shtm. The name we associate to them is what we use inside the main RailMiles and that disambiguates between all of them when it does its service searching (which is internally finding the train, and then picking up its TIPLOC-TIPLOC routing). They're not an unknown quantity at all

The rate limit is deliberately on there to manage load (and also prevent a level of scraping) and it's not that expensive to release that cap. From what I recall, it will count a valid query if it's received a valid origin/destination (so if you pass it something it doesn't know about, it won't count) regardless of whether it can route between the two points.

 

[APT618S]

Then you've got c2c which shows the length of carriages, and formerly which train was a 357 and which was a 387, but it's not really of much use to us on here while the numbers aren't there.

However for c2c, RTT knows to put in the 357 livery graphic the Union Jack for that unit(s?), so must have some access to the allocation despite not giving the unit numbers:

Realtime Trains | 2B88 1334 London Fenchurch Street to Shoeburyness | 14/06/2023

Real-time train running information for 2B88 1334 departure from London Fenchurch Street to Shoeburyness on 14/06/2023. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

Link to RTT showing coach 7 with the Union Jack livery on a particular working.

 

[12LDA28C]

Infuriatingly, these failed attempts to calculate mileage when you choose the wrong one count as one of the five (or it might be ten) daily mileage checks you can do for free, I believe.

Ten free checks per day is the allowance. Personally, I work the mileage out longhand on paper using Mile By Mile and then check my calculations using RailMiles to see that they at least roughly correlate. I try to be as accurate as possible.

 

[ainsworth74]

For example, to find the mileage from London Victoria to Battersea Park, you must choose from something like VICTRIA VICTRIE VICTRIH which are all options that show when you type London Victoria in, but only one will work for your particular route and you have to guess. Infuriatingly, these failed attempts to calculate mileage when you choose the wrong one count as one of the five (or it might be ten) daily mileage checks you can do for free, I believe.

Considering it's £10 for a years subscription to the engine perhaps you should just buy a sub if it's causing you that much trouble. Plus if more people subscribe Tom would have more incentive to improve it further!

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

Considering it's £10 for a years subscription to the engine perhaps you should just buy a sub if it's causing you that much trouble. Plus if more people subscribe Tom would have more incentive to improve it further!

I have had a subscription for the past three years, ta .

 

[WelshBluebird]

Is there a way of seeing the diagrams for a particular unit on a day by day basis (like you can for buses on bustimes.org)? (searching for a unit number just gives you its current journey).

 

[berneyarms]

Is there a way of seeing the diagrams for a particular unit on a day by day basis (like you can for buses on bustimes.org)? (searching for a unit number just gives you its current journey).

You would have to work backwards / forwards through the schedule using the platforms to see what trains they did beforehand / afterwards.

 

[Tom]

A limited set of fixes for some fleets (175s and 333s) have been put in place for train formations, and the TfW fleet has had its liveries refreshed.

 

[SuperLuke2334]

A limited set of fixes for some fleets (175s and 333s) have been put in place for train formations, and the TfW fleet has had its liveries refreshed.

Brilliant news, thanks for your work Tom.

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

A limited set of fixes for some fleets (175s and 333s) have been put in place for train formations, and the TfW fleet has had its liveries refreshed.

Amazing to get the 150s in their white, thanks for that. I won’t mention it again now I promise

Edit 22/6: Allocations not working for TfW today perhaps?
Edit Edit: Actually, that looks like pretty much all of the TOCs.

 

[Tom]

Edit 22/6: Allocations not working for TfW today perhaps?
Edit Edit: Actually, that looks like pretty much all of the TOCs.

Some problem upstream of RTT, there's a few a year.

 

[xtradj]

Some problem upstream of RTT, there's a few a year.

Hi Tom

Are there plans to get LM and Merseyrail up onto knowyourtrain or have the TOCs not been forthcoming? Many thanks

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

I mean I’m sure we all each have our own ideal TOCs for KYT, but it ultimately comes down to if they want to play ball.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

...and Tom has already stated that he won't say in advance which TOCs he's talking to in case it then doesn't happen.