A Level Computer Science Coursework

[MatthewE707]

I'm about to start my Computer Science coursework project for A Level, and I want to do it on something railway related, preferably a game. My original idea was to have a game that gives you two random tube stations for you to guess either the route between or the time taken to travel between, but I decided that might be a bit too simple, and I'm struggling to think of any other ideas. Any suggestions anyone has would be greatly appreciated!

 

[jupiter]

What’s the scope? Are you writing the code to implement the idea? If so, on what platform?

 

[MatthewE707]

What’s the scope? Are you writing the code to implement the idea? If so, on what platform?

Basically we have to code a large* project (with Python in my case), with documentation alongside.

(* most people end up ~8000 lines of code)

The exam board give this guidance on techniques to use (although it's not necessary to use all of them):

Complex data model in database (eg several interlinked tables)

Hash tables, lists, stacks, queues, graphs, trees or structures of equivalent standard

Files(s) organised for direct access

Complex scientific/mathematical/robotics/control/business model

Complex user-defined use of object-orientated programming (OOP) model, eg classes, inheritance, composition, polymorphism, interfaces

Complex client-server model

 

[pokemonsuper9]

I'm about to start my Computer Science coursework project for A Level, and I want to do it on something railway related, preferably a game. My original idea was to have a game that gives you two random tube stations for you to guess either the route between or the time taken to travel between, but I decided that might be a bit too simple, and I'm struggling to think of any other ideas. Any suggestions anyone has would be greatly appreciated!

You could take that idea and expand it to cover the country, kind of like a reverse Loconundrum and would probably make a good daily game (there's a lot of available station pairs)

 

[grinderx]

Which exam board is it and what unit?

Its important that any ideas give you a good chance to cover all the criteria around the database, object oriented and algorithm side.

The rail industry has a fair amount of data sources and formats that you could use as inputs, store in databases, represent in oo models etc.

It's interesting to see how courses have changed over the past few decades in computer science!

 

[Vexed]

Think about any specific interests. Maybe something using the new GEMINI data set (has nearly all passenger unit allocations) like calculating the mileage each unit does each day.

Maybe a guess the station game with hints like operators, passenger numbers, how many platforms etc.

I did my project with OCR three years ago, doing an online multiplayer chess system. Just remember it's important to document and discuss what you're doing and why to get high marks, at least for OCR, as well as actually making the thing. Even if you pick something you'd enjoy making it's still a pain to do everything else! Most of my class ended up with a submission over 100 pages, though I think mine was a bit under this.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 14 Jul 2026 ==

I'm way off, I've just checked and I submitted 203 pages.... I don't mean to scare you! It probably could (should?) have been shorter.

 

[walkingsophie]

There's tons of fares routeing and timetables data, you could probably do something with those.

 

[styles]

I did my project with OCR three years ago, doing an online multiplayer chess system. Just remember it's important to document and discuss what you're doing and why to get high marks, at least for OCR, as well as actually making the thing. Even if you pick something you'd enjoy making it's still a pain to do everything else! Most of my class ended up with a submission over 100 pages, though I think mine was a bit under this.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 14 Jul 2026 ==

I'm way off, I've just checked and I submitted 203 pages.... I don't mean to scare you! It probably could (should?) have been shorter.

I did mine with I believe WJEC, though it was called Computing rather than Computer Science, about 18 years ago and mine was similarly around 200 pages. A lot of it was of course tables, diagrams, etc though - it's not all paragraphs of text

 

[Egg Centric]

How about a simple signalling simulator? I'm not suggesting implementing simsig, but with 8000 lines you could certainly set up something ticking pretty much all your boxes that would be genuinely fun (if you like that sort of thing) as well. If you haven't played simsig before, maybe download it and have a go and see if you think a simplified version is feasible. I assume you'd have to write all the code by hand but perhaps you could vibe the layout?

I could go into more detail but I assume you don't want me to do your coursework for you!