7 ms·

Indian Railways, live on Google Maps

197 points by beingpractical 14y ago

napster265 14y ago
Good to see the world's largest public sector employer edging towards the technology !
- arethuza 14y ago
  "world's largest public sector employer" That dubious honour appears to belong to the US Dept. of Defense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers
  - z3phyr 14y ago
    Indian railways : more than 5 million employees, I wonder why wikipedia dosen't list it?
    - winkerVSbecks 14y ago
      Actually BBC did an article about this recently because there are a few misconceptions regarding this title and how many employees do these companies actually have: www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17429786
      - vilgax 14y ago
        Please include 'http' in your links to make it click-able.
        winkerVSbecks 14y ago
        didn't notice it was missing the http http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17429786 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17429786
    - taejo 14y ago
      It's there, but has only 1.4 million employees.
  - liquidwax 14y ago
    Indian Railways above Indian Armed forces. #peace
yogrish 14y ago
Very nice app esp. in context of India where train timings are highly unpredictable.How are they getting real time data - GPS fitted or Indian rail opened APIs? Good that they mentioned why it is not exact real time ..."For security and regulatory reasons, the information published on RailRadar is delayed for 5 or more minutes." edit: Rephrased.
- Derbasti 14y ago
  Usually, all railway lines must know the position of every train at any time. This is simply a requirement for avoiding crashes. As far as I know, there are usually pressure/induction sensors at regular intervals that detect train positions. Maybe that is what they are using? Electric railways usually only supply actually used sections of the railway with power, so they have to know train positions, too.
- kingsley_20 14y ago
  Indian railways employs a number of methods. The most primitive fallback is the one where the station master updates the system whenever a train passes the station, whether or not it stops there.
- boglin 14y ago
  http://trainenquiry.com/ http://trainenquiry.com/ already has same information in text/html format. This is just mapped to gui. Personally I prefer html format.
- jagira 14y ago
  Indian Railways has numerous monitoring stations. (mainly at railway stations) These monitoring stations update train's location when trains pass 'em. In between such points, IR may know train's realtime location, but it is not made public. Update It is mentioned on the site that there are 6000 monitoring stations. Which means that, on average, there is a monitoring station every 11 kms (66k Km/ 6000). Considering an average speed of 80kmph, the location shown on the app can at max be 8.25 minutes old.
- vigneshv_psg 14y ago
  trainenquiry.com is operated by CRIS (which falls under the railways ministry). So they have access to all of IR data.
treskot 14y ago
Can come handy while travelling in India. Especially the little known cities.
vilqqu 14y ago
Previous discussion on mapping trains: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4595208 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4595208
fredley 14y ago
At time of writing, 59% of trains are delayed. I have very fond memories of train travel in India. I learned a lot about relaxing, and going with the flow.
- dschiptsov 14y ago
  yeah, I also do miss them so much.. a 36 hour journey from Chennay to NJP in a Sleeper.. This is India.)
- maddalab 14y ago
  59% of trains delayed is not an accurate representation. IR has what is known as an operating schedule provided for intermediate stations which differs from the published schedule. The intermediate and published schedules are synchronized at major junctions along the way. The operating schedule has slack built in. A train running late by upto an hour usually arrives on or before time at major and terminating stations. A case in point right at this instance 65% of the trains are on schedule, checking during the morning hours in India will show a higher on time percentage on time as trains approach terminating stops.
  - fakeer 14y ago
    This is true mostly for the (very) long distance trains. For local (not Mumbai local or elk) or maybe between two cities or so, the trains are quite late. Especially in North India, the part of the country I hail from. It also has to do with punctuating the journey with many small stations and always being added halts.
  - bbgm 14y ago
    Correct. I don't know if this is still true, but there used to be an effort to keep a greater percentage of trains on time by delaying already late trains further (by prioritizing on time trains over them). As a railway brat, I miss long distance train travel like crazy.
    - hm8 14y ago
      It's still true. Though IR is doing a good job of reducing delays.
Jarihd 14y ago
Nice app. btw, How are you tracking trains? Is there an API for Indian railways or are you scraping data from their websites ???
- ajhai 14y ago
  AFAIK, this is done by railyatri.in for Indian Railways
guard-of-terra 14y ago
There were quite a few posts like this for different countries, so: http://rasp.yandex.ru/map/trains/#center=47.140977%2C54.427783,zoom=5 http://rasp.yandex.ru/map/trains/#center=47.140977%2C54.4277... Trains visualized (mostly Russian) This uses their schedules not actual tracking, but trains tend to run on time now.
jezclaremurugan 14y ago
Nice to see this. Hope the praise this gets inspires the Indian Railway to do something about irctc.co.in, which is far more important.
samikc 14y ago
Excellent map and railway timing integration. very nice
dan1234 14y ago
This is very nice, but does it breach Google's Ts&Cs with regard to business asset tracking? I only ask because I wanted to make something similar (though not India or trains) https://developers.google.com/maps/terms https://developers.google.com/maps/terms section 10.2b(iii)
- asmithmd1 14y ago
  10.2c(iii) is pretty clear that this use is explicitly allowed: "you may use the Google Maps API(s) to track assets such as cars, buses or other vehicles, as long as your tracking application is made available to the public without charge. For example, you may offer a free, public Maps API Implementation that displays real-time public transit or other transportation status information.)"
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  "please contact the Google Maps API for Business sales team" I'm pretty sure they did exactly that and got a green light.
- s_v 14y ago
  Use Leaflet or Modest Maps!
garry89 14y ago
Really greate work!!!!!
calebjohnclark 14y ago
By "mapped live" I was hoping to see the trains move on the map. Even if it wasn't 100% accurate, it would dramatically boost the cool factor to see the trains animated along the tracks. Just an idea. I love what you've already built.
pkapur86 14y ago
Love the idea! Thanks for sharing.
sremani 14y ago
Nicely done, I think the next step is to add granularity so that the user can focus on one particular region and get more detail.
rashkov 14y ago
"An illiterate child from a small town in India falls asleep on a train and ends up lost in Calcutta, unable to find his way back home. Twenty-five years later, while living with his adoptive family in Australia, he locates his lost hometown using memories and Google Earth. (David Kushner, Vanity Fair)" http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/11/india-orphan-google-earth-journey?src=longreads http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/11/india-orphan-googl...
- rburhum 14y ago
  That was a great read. Thank you!
  - rashkov 14y ago
    Glad you enjoyed it! Full credit goes to longreads.com
dbloom 14y ago
The same thing can be done with SF MUNI. http://www.nextmuni.com/googleMap/?a=sf-muni&r=KT&r=N&r=M&r=L&r=J&d=KT__OB1&s=7354 http://www.nextmuni.com/googleMap/?a=sf-muni&r=KT&r=... I check this before I leave every morning. I live just north of the Muni Metro East yard, so I can tell when a nice empty train is about to go into service and run over to the station just in time to catch it. (In theory you can enable every train and bus line at once, but after a certain point the page never loads)
hna0002 14y ago
If only the view was not blocked by a zillion ads!
santhoshn 14y ago
I am not sure how this can be useful for some one. When I want to take a train journey, I would like to know my train's position a few hours before I leave or when I am already at that station. I would not be sitting in front of this website and locating my train. A simple service of informing me about the delay by SMS would just be good enough. Also, the webpage loads a bit slowly on my laptop. On my smartphone with a 3G connection, it does not work at all.

197 points by beingpractical 14y ago

napster265 14y ago

Good to see the world's largest public sector employer edging towards the technology !

arethuza 14y ago
"world's largest public sector employer" That dubious honour appears to belong to the US Dept. of Defense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers
- z3phyr 14y ago
  Indian railways : more than 5 million employees, I wonder why wikipedia dosen't list it?
  - winkerVSbecks 14y ago
    Actually BBC did an article about this recently because there are a few misconceptions regarding this title and how many employees do these companies actually have: www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17429786
    - vilgax 14y ago
      Please include 'http' in your links to make it click-able.
      - winkerVSbecks 14y ago
        didn't notice it was missing the http http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17429786 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17429786
  - taejo 14y ago
    It's there, but has only 1.4 million employees.
- liquidwax 14y ago
  Indian Railways above Indian Armed forces. #peace

yogrish 14y ago

Very nice app esp. in context of India where train timings are highly unpredictable.How are they getting real time data - GPS fitted or Indian rail opened APIs? Good that they mentioned why it is not exact real time ..."For security and regulatory reasons, the information published on RailRadar is delayed for 5 or more minutes." edit: Rephrased.

Derbasti 14y ago
Usually, all railway lines must know the position of every train at any time. This is simply a requirement for avoiding crashes. As far as I know, there are usually pressure/induction sensors at regular intervals that detect train positions. Maybe that is what they are using? Electric railways usually only supply actually used sections of the railway with power, so they have to know train positions, too.
kingsley_20 14y ago
Indian railways employs a number of methods. The most primitive fallback is the one where the station master updates the system whenever a train passes the station, whether or not it stops there.
boglin 14y ago
http://trainenquiry.com/ http://trainenquiry.com/ already has same information in text/html format. This is just mapped to gui. Personally I prefer html format.
jagira 14y ago
Indian Railways has numerous monitoring stations. (mainly at railway stations) These monitoring stations update train's location when trains pass 'em. In between such points, IR may know train's realtime location, but it is not made public. Update It is mentioned on the site that there are 6000 monitoring stations. Which means that, on average, there is a monitoring station every 11 kms (66k Km/ 6000). Considering an average speed of 80kmph, the location shown on the app can at max be 8.25 minutes old.
vigneshv_psg 14y ago
trainenquiry.com is operated by CRIS (which falls under the railways ministry). So they have access to all of IR data.

treskot 14y ago

Can come handy while travelling in India. Especially the little known cities.

vilqqu 14y ago

Previous discussion on mapping trains: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4595208 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4595208

fredley 14y ago

At time of writing, 59% of trains are delayed. I have very fond memories of train travel in India. I learned a lot about relaxing, and going with the flow.

dschiptsov 14y ago
yeah, I also do miss them so much.. a 36 hour journey from Chennay to NJP in a Sleeper.. This is India.)
maddalab 14y ago
59% of trains delayed is not an accurate representation. IR has what is known as an operating schedule provided for intermediate stations which differs from the published schedule. The intermediate and published schedules are synchronized at major junctions along the way. The operating schedule has slack built in. A train running late by upto an hour usually arrives on or before time at major and terminating stations. A case in point right at this instance 65% of the trains are on schedule, checking during the morning hours in India will show a higher on time percentage on time as trains approach terminating stops.
- fakeer 14y ago
  This is true mostly for the (very) long distance trains. For local (not Mumbai local or elk) or maybe between two cities or so, the trains are quite late. Especially in North India, the part of the country I hail from. It also has to do with punctuating the journey with many small stations and always being added halts.
- bbgm 14y ago
  Correct. I don't know if this is still true, but there used to be an effort to keep a greater percentage of trains on time by delaying already late trains further (by prioritizing on time trains over them). As a railway brat, I miss long distance train travel like crazy.
  - hm8 14y ago
    It's still true. Though IR is doing a good job of reducing delays.

Jarihd 14y ago

Nice app. btw, How are you tracking trains? Is there an API for Indian railways or are you scraping data from their websites ???

ajhai 14y ago
AFAIK, this is done by railyatri.in for Indian Railways

guard-of-terra 14y ago

There were quite a few posts like this for different countries, so: http://rasp.yandex.ru/map/trains/#center=47.140977%2C54.427783,zoom=5 http://rasp.yandex.ru/map/trains/#center=47.140977%2C54.4277... Trains visualized (mostly Russian) This uses their schedules not actual tracking, but trains tend to run on time now.

jezclaremurugan 14y ago

Nice to see this. Hope the praise this gets inspires the Indian Railway to do something about irctc.co.in, which is far more important.

samikc 14y ago

Excellent map and railway timing integration. very nice

dan1234 14y ago

This is very nice, but does it breach Google's Ts&Cs with regard to business asset tracking? I only ask because I wanted to make something similar (though not India or trains) https://developers.google.com/maps/terms https://developers.google.com/maps/terms section 10.2b(iii)

asmithmd1 14y ago
10.2c(iii) is pretty clear that this use is explicitly allowed: "you may use the Google Maps API(s) to track assets such as cars, buses or other vehicles, as long as your tracking application is made available to the public without charge. For example, you may offer a free, public Maps API Implementation that displays real-time public transit or other transportation status information.)"
guard-of-terra 14y ago
"please contact the Google Maps API for Business sales team" I'm pretty sure they did exactly that and got a green light.
s_v 14y ago
Use Leaflet or Modest Maps!

garry89 14y ago

Really greate work!!!!!

calebjohnclark 14y ago

By "mapped live" I was hoping to see the trains move on the map. Even if it wasn't 100% accurate, it would dramatically boost the cool factor to see the trains animated along the tracks. Just an idea. I love what you've already built.

pkapur86 14y ago

Love the idea! Thanks for sharing.

sremani 14y ago

Nicely done, I think the next step is to add granularity so that the user can focus on one particular region and get more detail.

rashkov 14y ago

"An illiterate child from a small town in India falls asleep on a train and ends up lost in Calcutta, unable to find his way back home. Twenty-five years later, while living with his adoptive family in Australia, he locates his lost hometown using memories and Google Earth. (David Kushner, Vanity Fair)" http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/11/india-orphan-google-earth-journey?src=longreads http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/11/india-orphan-googl...

rburhum 14y ago
That was a great read. Thank you!
- rashkov 14y ago
  Glad you enjoyed it! Full credit goes to longreads.com

dbloom 14y ago

The same thing can be done with SF MUNI. http://www.nextmuni.com/googleMap/?a=sf-muni&r=KT&r=N&r=M&r=L&r=J&d=KT__OB1&s=7354 http://www.nextmuni.com/googleMap/?a=sf-muni&r=KT&r=... I check this before I leave every morning. I live just north of the Muni Metro East yard, so I can tell when a nice empty train is about to go into service and run over to the station just in time to catch it. (In theory you can enable every train and bus line at once, but after a certain point the page never loads)

hna0002 14y ago

If only the view was not blocked by a zillion ads!

santhoshn 14y ago

I am not sure how this can be useful for some one. When I want to take a train journey, I would like to know my train's position a few hours before I leave or when I am already at that station. I would not be sitting in front of this website and locating my train. A simple service of informing me about the delay by SMS would just be good enough. Also, the webpage loads a bit slowly on my laptop. On my smartphone with a 3G connection, it does not work at all.