Changes

• As i said before, did some serious code refactoring, if you have troubles in merging, I am happy to help.
• Several query string parameters can be used to customize the simulation:
  • hms: used to set the simulation time in hh:mm:ss format (i.e. the simulation position for 17:45:13.)
  • x, y: longitude and latitude – used to set the simulation start location to a custom location (i.e. Lausanne)
  • vehicle_name: used to automatically track a vehicle when we know its name. Example: the position of IC 835 at 17:45. Will let your imagine how easy is to integrate (via an IFRAME ?) this “boring” table view from SBB.
  • Bunch of experimental parameters(action, station_ids, arrs, deps, vehicle_name, vehicle_type) – used for adding a custom vehicle having the timetables declared via querystring. Example: a TGV running with 330 km/h between Zürich and Basel; it needs only 16 minutes .
• Stations panel: integration between stations and vehicles. Clicking on a vehicle brings a panel showing the stations that the vehicle stopped (grey-ish) and the upcoming stations. Clicking on any station loads the station panel containing the next 10 vehicles transiting that station. Clicking on any vehicle starts following the vehicle and so on. Personally I did a lot of clicking but you know that I am a train buff already .

Stay up-to-date

If you want to stay in touch with these updates, best will be to subscribe to this project’s RSS feed.
Use Twitter or this space to get in touch with me and suggest further updates.

Thanks for your interest in this project !

https://github.com/vasile/vehicle-simulator

Other changes

• Vehicle route: you can highlight the route that is followed by the vehicle when clicking on ‘Draw route’ button in the vehicle panel. Useful if you are interested which corners of the country are connected but also good for me in debugging if vehicles are following the right routes.
• Newly fresh 2012 timetables are available: last week I managed to get and integrate the latest timetables from SBB and CFR websites. BTW, I just noticed that Romania changed trains classification to use European standar ones, like IC, IR, Regio, etc.

Behind the scenes of this project

I will give a talk about swisstrains.ch on January 10th in Zürich at first meetup of Webtuesday.ch in 2012. If you are interested about what it took me to create the initial project, the technology stack used and the lessons learned, then make sure you attend the meeting ! More details about location are here.

Stay up-to-date

If you want to stay in touch with these updates, best will be to subscribe to this project’s RSS feed.
Use Twitter, G+ or this space to get in touch with me and suggest further updates.

Thanks for your interest in this project !

http://simcity.vasile.ch/sbb/

Changes

• Flyout with vehicle details: if you click on any vehicle(marker) you get detailed information about: name of the vehicle, a link to the provider(SBB, CFR), start/terminus stations and the status of the vehicle (if in motion – the next station and current speed; if in a station – when is departing that station).
• Vehicles with timetables spanning across two days are available now(before they were removed from the map after 23:59:59). In Switzerland there are not too many vehicles running after midnight but in Romania there are a lot, so therefore this feature is now available.
• The vectors network is now a directed graph. This means that the polylines used for AB route are not the same ones (reversed) that are used for the BA route. The best example is for the tracks between Brunnen and Flüelen where the vehicles are using two different ways depending on the direction of the train.
• Speaking of Flüelen, I added all tunnels of the Gotthard line, including the famous spiral ones.
• The simulation has now a more “stable” URL, http://simcity.vasile.ch/sbb/ and in the next release(s) will migrate it to http://www.swisstrains.ch

Stay up-to-date

If you want to stay in touch with these updates, best will be to subscribe to this project’s RSS feed.
Use Twitter, G+ or this space to get in touch with me and suggest further updates.

Thanks for your interest in this project !

http://simcity.vasile.ch/sbb/

Changes

• The project has new, freshly crawled timetables from SBB.
• The railway tunnels are now rendered on the map. Currently only the Zürich area is covered, will add the rest of them in the future updates.
• Made some adjustments of the tracks topology and incorporated user requests reporting outdated tracks. Thanks Œlk and please bring me more !
• Last but not list the code for creating the simulation is available on Github. Grab it now and start use it in your own projects !
• BTW, the railroad network is also available, under Fusion Tables: tracks and stations.
  Just Visualize > Map > Export to KML and you are good to go !

Stay up-to-date

If you want to stay in touch with these updates, best will be to subscribe to this project’s RSS feed.
Use Twitter, G+ or this space to get in touch with me and suggest further updates.

Thanks for your interest in this project !

http://www.vasile.ch/hacks/swisstrains-v2/

There are 4 years since I didn’t update www.swisstrains.ch project but nevertheless it was good thing because I used this interval to learn more about SBB railway infrastructure + more understanding of their website(which I am still crawling to get the project data from) but it was also an opportunity to polish my programming skills, to learn new technologies and to master various maps APIs; so now it’s time to move the project to the next level.
The current progress can be seen under hacks section of my website and in the following you can see what changed in this version.

These are from the G+ post that I posted shortly after publishing my hack.

Changes

• usage of GMaps JS API v3 + google.maps.geometry.spherical library; before I used v2 + home-made geo helpers
• cleaner, less and highly optimized JS code; if you want to have fun just read the (JS) source code of swisstrains.ch
• carefully reviewed HTTP headers and started to cache and GZIP always when I had the chance
• map interaction improved; there are no more ‘Loading’, ‘Zoom beyond level x forbidden’ annoying dialogs. Maps are also styled now (thanks GMaps v3 !) so the unnecessary elements (like roads) are dimmed.
• straightforward export process of the SBB trains network line; 4 years ago I used several (commercial) GIS tools, today I am using only open source tools
• storing of the railroad network(2000+ polylines and 1800 points=stations) is done using Fusion Tables; before painted them one by one (so 2000 GPolyline objects + 1800+ GMarkers=DIVs)
• ability to plot ALL the running vehicles (which are up to 700, depends on time of day) and visualize them in one map.
• GMaps API v3 is designed for mobile; guess what, this version runs smoothly and loads pretty fast on iPhone, Android. Tablets too !

Next steps

Depending on my availability (remember I am doing this in my free time), I will try to:

• push this project to you via Github
• review/port other features of the current swisstrains.ch
• update the romanian version http://cfr.webgis.ro
• improve the mobile version, maybe try native

Make sure you watch this space for the next updates !
Also please add your comments about the project, i.e. if you miss any train lines, vehicles or you want to see new features.