About Trainspotter

Trainspotter is a free, independent web app built for the UK railway enthusiast community. Whether you are an experienced spotter with decades of underlinings in your ABC of Locomotives, a parent taking a curious child to the end of a platform for the first time, or simply someone who enjoys watching trains pass by on a lazy Sunday afternoon, Trainspotter is designed to make your hobby easier, richer, and a little more connected to the modern world of open data.

The app brings together real-time train movement information from Network Rail and the National Rail Darwin feed, presents it on a fast, mobile-friendly map and station board, and pairs it with a personal logbook so you can keep a permanent record of every locomotive, multiple unit, or rake of stock you have seen. It works on any modern smartphone, tablet, or computer with a web browser, and is also available as a wrapped native app on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store for users who prefer an icon on their home screen.

Why we built Trainspotter

Trainspotting in Britain has a long and proud history, stretching back to the days when Ian Allan first sold platform-end booklets at Waterloo in the 1940s. Generations of enthusiasts have stood at the end of platforms, on lineside footpaths, and at level crossings, notebook and pen in hand, recording the four- and five-digit numbers carried by every passing locomotive and unit. The hobby has always been about more than just numbers: it is about understanding the network, the operators, the diagrams, and the patterns of working that make Britain's railway one of the most intensively used in the world.

Modern technology has changed how the railway is operated, and it has changed how the railway can be observed. Network Rail and the rail industry now publish a huge volume of operational data through open feeds, originally intended for journey planners and third-party passenger information tools. With a bit of work, that same data can be reshaped into something that serves spotters too — showing not just the next four passenger trains at a station, but every booked service of every kind, including freight, light engine moves, empty coaching stock, and route-learning runs. Trainspotter exists to put that information in the palm of your hand without the steep learning curve of consuming the raw feeds yourself.

What the app does

At its core, Trainspotter offers three things. First, it shows you what is happening right now at any of the roughly 2,500 stations on the National Rail network. Pick a station — your nearest, your local, or one you are travelling to — and you can see arrivals, departures, and trains passing through without stopping. Each service links to a detail page with its full calling pattern, operator, formation where known, and real-time updates as the train progresses.

Second, it shows you trains on a live map. Zoom out for a national view with clustered markers, or zoom in to your local area to see individual services moving along the lines. Passenger services, freight workings, empty stock movements, and parcels trains are colour-coded so you can tell at a glance what kind of working each marker represents. Tap any train for the full schedule, the originating and terminating points, the operator, and the unique rail identifier (RID) used by Darwin.

Third, it gives you a personal logbook. Sign in with email, Google, or Apple, and you can tap "Log Spot" on any train to add it to your permanent record. The logbook tracks the date, time, location, and full service details of every sighting. You can browse your own history, see how many trains you have spotted today, this week, or this year, and build a personal fleet of vehicles you have seen.

The data behind the app

Trainspotter draws on two main sources of public rail data. The first is the National Rail Darwin feed, the industry-standard real-time information system that powers most journey planners and station information displays in Great Britain. Darwin provides scheduled and live timing data for every passenger train, including platform allocations, delays, cancellations, and short-formations.

The second source is the Network Rail CIF (Common Interface File) feed, which contains the full Working Timetable — the operational schedule used by signallers and train crew. The CIF feed includes freight services, empty stock workings, light engine moves, and engineering trains that never appear in the public journey planner. Combining the two feeds gives Trainspotter a far more complete picture of what is actually running on the network than any passenger-focused app can offer.

Behind the scenes, the app downloads and processes hundreds of thousands of schedule rows every day, normalising them into a single database keyed by TIPLOC (Timing Point Location) code and CRS (Computer Reservation System) station code. Real-time updates are layered on top throughout the day, so the station boards and map reflect the actual state of the railway, not just yesterday's plan.

Who Trainspotter is for

We have tried to build an app that works equally well for several kinds of user. The lifelong enthusiast who already knows that 66xxx is a Class 66 and that a 5Z headcode usually means an empty stock or test working will find the freight and ECS coverage genuinely useful. The casual hobbyist who likes watching trains at their local station will appreciate the simple, uncluttered "next arrivals" view. Families introducing children to the railway can use the map to explain how trains move between cities. And travellers can use the same station boards as anyone else, with the bonus of knowing when a passing freight might thunder through.

Trainspotter is not, and does not try to be, a journey planning app. We do not sell tickets, and we do not promise to find you the cheapest route from A to B. There are excellent tools for that already. What we offer instead is a window on the railway as a living, working network — a tool for people who find the trains themselves interesting, not just the journeys they make possible.

Privacy and data handling

We take privacy seriously. The only personal information Trainspotter stores is what you give us when you create an account (your email address, and optionally a display name) and the list of sightings you choose to log. Location data, when you grant permission, is used in the browser to centre the map on your position; we do not store your location history on our servers. You can delete your account and all associated data at any time from within the app. Full details are in our privacy policy, and you can request deletion at any time via the delete my data page.

An independent project

Trainspotter is not affiliated with Network Rail, National Rail, the Rail Delivery Group, Great British Railways, or any train operating company. We use their publicly available open data feeds under their respective licences, but the app, its design, and its features are an independent project. Any errors in the data displayed are most likely a result of how we have processed the feeds; please get in touch via our contact page if you spot something that looks wrong and we will do our best to fix it.

Get involved

Trainspotter is a small project, and feedback from real users is the single most useful thing in shaping what comes next. If there is a feature you would love to see — historical sighting export, a community leaderboard, integration with railway photography sites, better support for heritage and charter workings — please let us know. Visit our contact page to send us a message, report a bug, or just say hello. Happy spotting.