Phone apps?

[WhiteRose]

I was at Colton Junction near York a couple of weeks ago. At the other side of the layby was a couple of blokes I didn't know. Way off in the distance a set of headlights appeared and one of these blokes pulled out his phone, glanced at it and then said to his mate 'this is the Colas 66'. Sure enough, a minute or so later the headlights turned out to be a Colas 66. So my question is, how did he know? Is there a smart phone app for this information?

Cheers

 

[Michael.Y]

He'd probably either made an advance note of the movements of the day; or he had a mate in the company / ahead on the line who texted him.

 

[Buffer68]

Also there are a number of Yahoo rail groups that you can join for free - some are national and some are local. Here is an example: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/rail-gen/ You will need a Yahoo account but that's easy to do and then once you've joined a group you can then get emails. Ultimately if you have a phone that does email, you can get live updates whilst you are on the railway.

 

[WhiteRose]

Brilliant. I'll take a look.

Cheers

 

[brillopad]

Won't cover ECS, freight or Engineering but I use Thales 'Rail PLanner Live' on my Android phone to get live timings of my train passing through stations on it's way to me and an estimate of when I'll get home plus what platform I need to be on.

 

[Buffer68]

Won't cover ECS, freight or Engineering but I use Thales 'Rail PLanner Live' on my Android phone to get live timings of my train passing through stations on it's way to me and an estimate of when I'll get home plus what platform I need to be on.

Looks really good - have emailed them to ask if they're going to do a Blackberry version - would be so popular.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Just had an email back from Thales and they are currently developing Rail Planner Live for Blackberry. Should be in the new year some time. Look forward to that.

 

[142094]

No doubt it'll be a Yahoo gen group, although internet coverage at Colton can be quite patchy at times. There are also some people at Donny who text their mates about sightings, same as at Carlisle.

 

[phil8715]

I had access to a staff version of national rail which gave me real time info and the train's rep no's.