RealTimeTrains website

[tfw756rider]

On each page it's quite new, from only the last week or so.

Ah, so it was only on the homepage / search for trains page until recently?

It is a nice amusing "feature" though!

...Birmingham New Street, Edinburgh Waverley, Glasgow Queen Street...

Hoscar!
Llandecwyn!
Lochluichart!



== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 2 Jul 2025 ==

Oh fair enough! Could have sworn I saw it a while ago.

It was previously on the homepage / search for trains page only I believe.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 2 Jul 2025 ==

The "Newcastle" link points to Leeds

Oops! Yes, both the "Leeds" and "Newcastle" links currently point to Leeds @Tom

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 2 Jul 2025 ==

I've noticed that the "homepage / search for trains page" set of departure board links has 12 links - London Bridge, Waterloo, Euston, Paddington, Victoria, Liverpool Street, Clapham Junction, Manchester Piccadilly, Birmingham New Street, Edinburgh Waverley, Glasgow Queen Street, (random minor station),

whereas the "every other page" set of departure board links has 15 links - the above 12, plus 3 additional ones of Leeds, "Newcastle" (currently Leeds again) and Glasgow Central.

Was this inconsistency intentional?

Also, are Liverpool Lime Street and Cardiff Central not popular enough departure boards to be included?

 

[FGW_DID]

Falls of Cruachan!
Sounds like it should be on the ‘Mordor Line’.
Previous stop - the ‘Mines of Moria’.
Next Stop - Minas Tirith
Terminates at Orodruin (alight here for Cracks of Doom)

 

[tfw756rider]

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/about/faq/​

Where can I find the numbers of the rolling stock on the service?​

This data is not given to us through the Network Rail open data service, but we have made arrangements with selected operators to make this information available. You can find a list of these operators on the Know Your Train help page.

When this information is available, it will be shown on the page of the relevant service for the service.

I think this needs grammatical attention ​

 

[tumbledown]

Terminates at Orodruin (alight here for Cracks of Doom)

I thought it was Hitachi Maintenance Depot for Cracks of Doom.

 

[ExRes]

A question if I may, RTT shows Hanson & Hall as having a TOC code of YG, however if you enter that for a search it comes up as not vaild, a minor glitch on the site or with me?

Thanks

Apologies for going back to this post but 'YG' still shows as a TOC code and "the code you have chosen is not valid" is still the response, any particular reason please?

 

[GBM]

I appreciate your fast response and commitment, I will be reporting them from now onwards.

I look forward to the subscription service, hopefully its a reasonable price.

Any news yet on the subscription service please?

 

[Tom]

There are a couple of legal and accounting issues that came up which we had to get through which has slowed things down slightly.

We've already determined the packages, prices are set, etc. Prices are pretty similar to RailMiles and bundles will be available for both.

I expect it'll be available before the end of the summer.

 

[62484GlenLyon]

Thanks for the update, Tom. The sooner all the outstanding issues can be completed, the better.

 

[SynthD]

Is it possible to have keywords in the url that are converted to nearby dates? Eg I have this link which shows all WCML Scotland trains for today, and I want to bookmark this to access in the future and see the trains for that day? The keyword would be “today” and go in place of the date. Others might be tomorrow, or Wednesday meaning the next (including today) of that day.

Realtime Trains | Departures from London Euston all day on 16/07/2025

Train information at London Euston all day on 16/07/2025. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

 

[duffield]

Is it possible to have keywords in the url that are converted to nearby dates? Eg I have this link which shows all WCML Scotland trains for today, and I want to bookmark this to access in the future and see the trains for that day? The keyword would be “today” and go in place of the date. Others might be tomorrow, or Wednesday meaning the next (including today) of that day.

Realtime Trains | Departures from London Euston all day on 16/07/2025

Train information at London Euston all day on 16/07/2025. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

You can do this with a little bookmark magic (in Chrome, desktop version anyhow; I haven't tested other browsers and platforms).

Create a bookmark, any page will do, e.g. Google home page.
Right click and select edit.
Change the name to something suitable.
In the URL field, paste some Javascript like this (make sure you carefully copy and paste all of the code including the scrolled off bit, and nothing but the code):

javascript:function url() {
  function padd(val) {
    return ('0' + val).slice(-2);
  }
  var date = new Date();
  var y = date.getUTCFullYear();
  var m = padd(date.getUTCMonth() +1);
  var d = padd(date.getUTCDate());
  var h = padd(date.getUTCHours());
  var n = padd(date.getUTCMinutes());
  var s = padd(date.getUTCSeconds());
  var dateString = y + '-' + m + '-' + d;
return 'https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/detailed/gb-nr:EUS/to/gb-nr:PNR/' + dateString + '/0000-2359?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt' } window.open(url(),"_blank");

Save the edited bookmark, and off you go. I've tested this example (for the enquiry you detailed above) and it works.

Create more bookmarks for different locations etc. by changing the "return" string.

Note the example doesn't use the Javascript time fields, they're there in case they are needed.

 

[Adam Williams]

String.prototype.padStart would save you the function declaration, I think?

 

[duffield]

String.prototype.padStart would save you the function declaration, I think?

Sounds like you know Javascript much better than I do, I've never "learned" Javascript, I just cobbled together a few example fragments from here and there until it worked!
Please post an improved version if you think it's worth it.

 

[Adam Williams]

Sounds like you know Javascript much better than I do

I really wouldn't go that far

Below is kinda how I'd shape it; whether it's prettier or uglier is perhaps in the eye of the beholder

  function url() {
    const date = new Date();
    const y = date.getUTCFullYear().toString();
    const m = (date.getUTCMonth() + 1).toString().padStart(2, '0');
    const d = (date.getUTCDate()).toString().padStart(2, '0');
    const h = (date.getUTCHours()).toString().padStart(2, '0');
    const n = (date.getUTCMinutes()).toString().padStart(2, '0');
    const s = (date.getUTCSeconds()).toString().padStart(2, '0');

    return `https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/detailed/gb-nr:EUS/to/gb-nr:PNR/${y}-${m}-${d}/0000-2359?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt`;
  }
  url();

One day in the not too distant future it may be possible to just

const url = () => `https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/detailed/gb-nr:EUS/to/gb-nr:PNR/${Temporal.Now.plainDateISO()}/0000-2359?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt`;
// window.open(......)

but that'll only work in Firefox today

 

[Robski]

Please post an improved version if you think it's worth it.

One liner:

javascript:window.open(`https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/detailed/gb-nr:EUS/to/gb-nr:PNR/${(new Date().toLocaleDateString('en-ca'))}/0000-2359?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt`, "_blank");

 

[Adam Williams]

One liner:

javascript:window.open(`https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/detailed/gb-nr:EUS/to/gb-nr:PNR/${(new Date().toLocaleDateString('en-ca'))}/0000-2359?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt`, "_blank");

Always felt a bit hacky to me relying on the fact that Canada happens to have a locale configured that overlaps with ISO8601 when it comes to date formats, though I'll admit it is concise!

 

[tfw756rider]

There are a couple of legal and accounting issues that came up which we had to get through which has slowed things down slightly.

We've already determined the packages, prices are set, etc. Prices are pretty similar to RailMiles and bundles will be available for both.

I expect it'll be available before the end of the summer.

After the release of the subscription service, will the following issues be fixed?

Oops! Yes, both the "Leeds" and "Newcastle" links currently point to Leeds @Tom

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 2 Jul 2025 ==

I've noticed that the "homepage / search for trains page" set of departure board links has 12 links - London Bridge, Waterloo, Euston, Paddington, Victoria, Liverpool Street, Clapham Junction, Manchester Piccadilly, Birmingham New Street, Edinburgh Waverley, Glasgow Queen Street, (random minor station),

whereas the "every other page" set of departure board links has 15 links - the above 12, plus 3 additional ones of Leeds, "Newcastle" (currently Leeds again) and Glasgow Central.

Was this inconsistency intentional?

Also, are Liverpool Lime Street and Cardiff Central not popular enough departure boards to be included?

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/about/faq/​

When this information is available, it will be shown on the page of the relevant service for the service.

I think this needs grammatical attention ​

And progress made on graphics, such as for the 756s?

As always though of course, I do appreciate Realtime Trains very much.

 

[Tom]

I think there are already plans in hand to remedy those things but I’ve been away for a few days attempting to do the Aberdeen-Wick flight finally so am not completely on top of it.

This isn’t an official channel for support and there are other people working for me too (very much not interested in trains) so it is worthwhile sending an email to support too.

 

[Waterlemon]

My Google newsfeed. I spend a lot of time refreshing RTT so it's decided it's going to try and guess what pages I want to see next. Never searched for any of these services and I don't live near any of them either. I wonder how google decides which ones it thinks I'll be interested in.

 

[enginedin]

Quick question (maybe for @Tom)

some of the data is occasionally a little inconsistent - e.g. services from Colchester to Walton-on-the-Naze don't get shown as reversing at Colchester Town (https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:Y09788/2025-07-26#allox_id=0) - is this because it's a terminus so it's implicit that it will have to reverse, or some other reason?

(i.e. unlike CrossCountry trains that get shown as reversing at Reading: https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:C23564/2025-07-27#allox_id=2)

 

[Tom]

RM activity will be missing in the data for that location.

 

[Tramfan]

Quick question (maybe for @Tom)

some of the data is occasionally a little inconsistent - e.g. services from Colchester to Walton-on-the-Naze don't get shown as reversing at Colchester Town (https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:Y09788/2025-07-26#allox_id=0) - is this because it's a terminus so it's implicit that it will have to reverse, or some other reason?

(i.e. unlike CrossCountry trains that get shown as reversing at Reading: https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:C23564/2025-07-27#allox_id=2)

Presumably it's picking it up from the timetable data - if the data doesn't have a reverse movement in the schedule, it won't be shown in RTT?

*edit - see Tom has already confirmed whilst I was checking the schedules!

 

[Class 170101]

Quick question (maybe for @Tom)

some of the data is occasionally a little inconsistent - e.g. services from Colchester to Walton-on-the-Naze don't get shown as reversing at Colchester Town (https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:Y09788/2025-07-26#allox_id=0) - is this because it's a terminus so it's implicit that it will have to reverse, or some other reason?

It would change the direction of the station bank so not sure timetables would like that

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 2 Aug 2025 ==

@Tom I think you need a new operator code for Lumo operated London to Stirling services

 

[pokemonsuper9]

@Tom I think you need a new operator code for Lumo operated London to Stirling services

Is it known that they're going to use their own code, rather than just using Lumo's existing one?

 

[hexagon789]

I think you need a new operator code for Lumo operated London to Stirling services

Is it known that they're going to use their own code, rather than just using Lumo's existing one?

As far as I can see, they have a new operator code?

At least the new Lumo WCML services displaying in RTT post-December all use a new, separate code: "LF"

 

[Tom]

It would change the direction of the station bank so not sure timetables would like that

I don't think so.

@Tom I think you need a new operator code for Lumo operated London to Stirling services

Just because there's a new operator code now does not mean that there will be when they come to operate train services. The GC NW services at the start Covid were intended to go back to GC codes. I will talk to Lumo.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

As far as I can see, they have a new operator code?

At least the new Lumo WCML services displaying in RTT post-December all use a new, separate code: "LF"

I didn't realise they were in the timetable yet!
Yes being able to filter on LF would be a good help.

 

[Class15]

I didn't realise they were in the timetable yet!
Yes being able to filter on LF would be a good help.

Would it make a difference though? I don’t think there are any places where the two Lumo services would share a location, but happy to be proved wrong.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

Would it make a difference though? I don’t think there are any places where the two Lumo services would share a location, but happy to be proved wrong.

I don't think it matters if there's 1 or 2 codes, but just being able to filter on it would be useful.
They don't share any locations (although they do pass over/under each other near Greenhill Junction).

 

[BRX]

I never really understand these "pathing allowances". I sort of assume they are some kind of padding introduced into the timings. However, often the allowance is much larger than any gap between timing points. Here for example, where does that 10 minutes go or come from? It's more than the 4.5 minutes allowed for between Bellingham & Catford, for example. The prediction for the late running train thinks it can get from BEC to CTF in one minute vs the 6 in the schedule but again that's less than 10. Is the 10 somehow spread over multiple points?

 

[Intercity_225]

View attachment 185820

I never really understand these "pathing allowances". I sort of assume they are some kind of padding introduced into the timings. However, often the allowance is much larger than any gap between timing points. Here for example, where does that 10 minutes go or come from? It's more than the 4.5 minutes allowed for between Bellingham & Catford, for example. The prediction for the late running train thinks it can get from BEC to CTF in one minute vs the 6 in the schedule but again that's less than 10. Is the 10 somehow spread over multiple points?

The points with the planned timings in grey are automatically added by RTT, the allowances mean the amount of padding from one pure black point (in this case Bellingham) to another (in this case Nunhead).

That's the best way that I can explain it, I'm sure someone will do it much better later.