Wow, I don't know why I thought there would be... Way, way more trains active at a given time.<p>I suppose I overestimated passenger rail popularity in this country.. I knew it wasn't relatively huge, but there's several hundred miles in some cases between trains.
I’d kind of like real-time tracking of <i>freight</i> trains. There’s a BNSF grade crossing between my home and my parents’ and it would be nice to know whether I should take the 1 mile detour to get to the tunnel beneath the rail yard if there’s a train going to be blocking (I suppose it would also help to have info on the length of the trains so I’d know if the train in front of me is almost clear or if there’s another mile of train behind it).
How very convenient! I'm on this map. My train is in the right position, but I don't think the name is quite right: I'm on the Silver Star but it's labelled as the Northeast Regional. Excellent project, though, thanks for posting.
I love these maps.
Here is one from Switzerland: <a href="https://maps.vasile.ch/transit-sbb/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://maps.vasile.ch/transit-sbb/</a>, just a tad bit busier than the US
This is cool, but you are missing NJ Transit which has passenger trains separate from LIRR and Metro North. You are also missing Septa and MTA internal city light rail and subway lines, which are technically passenger trains.
Here's a cool one for Tokyo in 3D: <a href="https://minitokyo3d.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://minitokyo3d.com/</a>
Super cool! I love this. Makes me yearn for a day when this map is way more full of activity.<p>Just a little feedback: the color for Amtrak and for Chicago's Metra trains are so similar it's hard to see at a glance where the Amtrak runs are amongst the many Metras that are out at a given time. Would be awesome to differentiate those marker colors a bit more.<p>Very cool! Didn't know this was even technically possible with the available data feeds. Great work!
Here is THE MAP for France !
<a href="https://carto.graou.info/46.90174/1.83822/5.4455/0/0" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://carto.graou.info/46.90174/1.83822/5.4455/0/0</a>
Shameless plug : we are developping Trainscanner to travel accross Europe <a href="https://www.train-scanner.com/?u=hn-c-38434574" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.train-scanner.com/?u=hn-c-38434574</a>
Do not hesitate to leave us some feedback :)
Here's one more for your list: <a href="https://southshore.etaspot.net" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://southshore.etaspot.net</a><p>Southshore Line - connecting Chicago, IL (Millennium Station) to South Bend, IN, via East Chicago, Gary, Chesterton, etc
I believe there was a quote from a railroad exec that Passenger rail traffic accounts for only 3% of the overall rail traffic in North America. If true, the map would be covered with Locomotives if freight was included (GP-40's are my favorite).
Kind of underwhelming. Superb work, but the average distance between trains is, like, at least 500 miles? This is what the opposite of public transportation looks like, unfortunately.<p>What would that map look like if even 5% of the annual military budget of the US would be invested in trains?
India <a href="http://railradar.railyatri.in/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://railradar.railyatri.in/</a><p>You will be baffled by the amount of trains.
Cool! Super cool!<p>Would love to see where the data's coming from -- with enough detail that I can spin up my own instance and shove the geo data in a database. (Unless you plan on making money from this, that is. The fact that you're aggregating a dozen random feeds with their own format into one schema is 100% "all the work")<p>I wanted to do this for ADSB data, but couldn't figure out how to get any quantity of data without paying money.
It shows the sad state of the public train system in the US. For comparison, here is a similar map for the UK:<p><a href="https://www.map.signalbox.io/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.map.signalbox.io/</a>
We have something similar in Hungary:<p><a href="http://vonatinfo.mav-start.hu/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://vonatinfo.mav-start.hu/</a><p>Pretty cool, it's a shame that the actual (state-owned) trainlines are in shambles.
Looks like the Alaska Railroad doesn't have any publicly available location data on their site - <a href="https://www.alaskarailroad.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.alaskarailroad.com/</a><p>Which is a shame, because I actually worked on a live train map internally when I was an intern there a decade ago.
A lovely map — thanks for using Leaflet and keeping that little Ukrainian flag in the corner! Probably needs an attribution for the map added too (looks like it's Carto with an OpenStreetMap-derived basemap).
Very nice! A companion to Rachel Binx' Amtrak Explorer, which shows routes. <a href="https://amtrakexplorer.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://amtrakexplorer.com/</a>
Congrats on the launch! Very nice project.<p>Do you have any estimation of what percentage of passenger train traffic is currently displayed vs. still to be implemented? As others have mentioned, I also was little bit surprised of the (small?) amount of trains on the map.<p>Similar map for Finnish trains: <a href="https://www.vr.fi/en/live-train-tracker-map" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.vr.fi/en/live-train-tracker-map</a>
It would be cool to see an equivalent map for freight rail.<p>These threads always focus on the lack of passenger rail service in the US but ignore that the US also has one of the largest, safest, and most efficient freight rail systems in the world[1]. I'd love to see it live!<p><a href="https://railroads.dot.gov/rail-network-development/freight-rail-overview" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://railroads.dot.gov/rail-network-development/freight-r...</a>
Here in India we have an app named "Where is my train?". Local people use this app a lot when traveling by train. It's not government owned either and has no ads. Just throwing in here for some inspiration since I don't know the inner workings of that app.<p>Edit: It uses nearby cell towers to estimate the location of train
In Finland I've been using a similar tool for years now when picking up family members from railways stations and when getting out from the station and out to the platform to board a train: <a href="https://www.vr.fi/en/live-train-tracker-map" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.vr.fi/en/live-train-tracker-map</a><p>It's incredibly more helpful than timetables (printed or online) or late train announcements and trying to find the right train names and numbers. Instead of identifying the right train, then checking the latest changes for that train on the schedule board and wondering if "3 minutes late" really means "3 minutes" you just look at the map and see, oh there's my train half way here from the previous town, I'll go have a cuppa.
If you want to add the Chicago transit train location data, the API documentation and API key request form are available here:<p><a href="https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/traintracker/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/traintracker/</a>
There is also TRAVIC (<a href="https://travic.app" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://travic.app</a>) by the University of Freiburg, Germany which visualizes transit data worldwide, both live and interpolated from timetables.
Busses would be soo much better if there was real time location of busses and trains that you could view on a map. Probably the lowest hanging fruit to pick for public transport improvement.
Really cool idea. Would be neat to also be able to click railways as well. I think openrailwaymap provides some cool details like owner, max speed, electrification.<p>I also noticed the map makes it look like the trains are travelling slightly south of the track. It seems to converge once you zoom in though, so I think the data is probably accurate, but somehow the map is distorting things.
This is really cool and I've already found a couple of lines that went further than I realized. This is going to make me use trains more!<p>On that note, one feature that would be really helpful is if I selected a particular train, that it would show me where the stations are on that line. Maybe the train company would even give you a commission if I clicked through and bought a ticket.
I love it! I made a mashup of video feeds and live train locations to show you video feeds from trains that are about to show up: <a href="https://train.api.connelly.casa/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://train.api.connelly.casa/</a><p>This gives me lots of ideas of additional agencies to include! Maybe we should join forces :)
This is very cool.<p>For US inter-city rail there is also Amtrak’s official <i>Track Your Train</i>: <a href="https://www.amtrak.com/track-your-train.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.amtrak.com/track-your-train.html</a>
What was behind the decision to include just commuter rail and long-distance passenger rail, but not local rapid transit? Is it a resource issue drawing that many vehicles? I love this map, but I'd love to see it with more modes of transport.
Nice project. It looks like there are a couple of map layers? Because if you look at Truckee, California (near Reno), it looks like you have two text blocks trying to both show Truckee.
There is a very nice french version which has been running for years: <a href="https://carto.graou.info/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://carto.graou.info/</a>
I don't think it's working properly. Most (if not all?) trains are going at around 40-20 km/h. Why would they all stop in the middle of nowhere like this ?
This is so cool!
It'd be nice to get some more info on the info windows.
Like a photo of the train would be awesome (similar to the plane trackers)!
Similar for Great Britain: <a href="https://www.map.signalbox.io/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.map.signalbox.io/</a>
It would be neat if you could include the West Coast Express trains in Vancouver that are part of Translink. They're weekday commuter rail trains.
I was honestly ready for this to be one sad train icon chugging its way across the United States. I'm really pleased to see it's more than that.<p>But not <i>much</i> more, and it makes me so sad that we undervalue real public transportation here. I wish we could do better.<p>Still! This is something! And this website is cool!
It's sad that even great potential routes like SF->LA aren't accessible by train, and we don't seem to have the state capacity to build HSR there.<p>I was just in Japan, and took the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto, which is a similar distance as SF to LA.<p>That train:<p>- runs every 10 minutes -- if you miss one, just take the next one!<p>- takes 2.5 hours travel time<p>- starts and ends in city centers on both ends.<p>- has better legroom and wider seats than economy<p>- free, fast Wifi on board, your cell signal still works, and you can use your computer the whole trip.<p>- has no security or boarding hassle. You can show up 5 minutes before departure and just get on.<p>- has no luggage limitations AFAICT<p>It's faster and far less stressful than flying SF to LA, with the security and boarding hassles, Ubers on both ends, and cramped onboard conditions.
Would you please add an OpenStreetMap attribution[0]? It looks like you're using OSM data via OpenRailwayMap (which also requires its own attribution[1]) and Carto basemaps (which I'm not terribly familiar with, but at first glance appear to be based on OSM data[2])---each of which detail their respective attribution requirements.<p>Leaflet makes this incredibly simple; just add the suggested text to the attribution field when you initialize the layers:<p><pre><code> L.tileLayer('https://{s}.basemaps.cartocdn.com/light_all/{z}/{x}/{y}{r}.png', {
maxZoom: 19,
attribution: '' // here!
}).addTo(map);
var railwayOverlay = L.tileLayer('https://{s}.tiles.openrailwaymap.org/standard/{z}/{x}/{y}.png', {
attribution: '', // and here!
}).addTo(map);
</code></pre>
[0]: <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenRailwayMap/API" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenRailwayMap/API</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P7bhSE-N9iegI398QYDjKeVhnbS7-Ilk/view" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P7bhSE-N9iegI398QYDjKeVhnbS...</a> via <a href="https://carto.com/legal" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://carto.com/legal</a>
In contrast have a look at a snapshot of air travel the other day.<p><a href="https://x.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1729195110888620057?s=20" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://x.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1729195110888620057?s=20</a><p>If we're looking for some low hanging fruit around how to possibly lower CO2 emissions, well folks here it is.<p>The solutions to our climate problem have been staring us in the face since the 1900s.
Similar but for the London Undergroound:<p><a href="https://traintimes.org.uk/map/tube/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://traintimes.org.uk/map/tube/</a>
<a href="https://traintimes.org.uk/map/tube/schematic/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://traintimes.org.uk/map/tube/schematic/</a>
For Austria you can see them all here: <a href="https://anachb.vor.at/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://anachb.vor.at/</a> ("Kartenoptionen" -> "Livemap" -> "Alle einblenden"). Even covers buses, subways, trams and local trains as well as public transport ships.