alt Hacker NewsBit puzzled by some of the station data. This train:
https://www.map.signalbox.io/?train=202607066710114&location...
is a train from Cambridge to Kings Cross - and in the side panel it shows it as calling at the new Cambridge South station. But Cambridge South isn't shown on the map. That's kinda understandable (because it opened a week ago), but Cambridge North (which opened in 2017) also isn't shown on the map. Neither are offered in any of the auto-complete dropdowns?
I'm wondering if the station data a static dataset which hasn't been updated in a long time?
Replies
Yeah it only seems to show small station near me, and not the main city stations, not sure why but it's very incomplete, and not related to age. For example Sheffield station isn't on the map, and that opened in 1870.
It's probably a static feed, and they've probably had to do some lifting to define the layout and map that to the raw data they get from Network Rail, and they've probably not updated it for newly opened stations. There is a station near me that's been open for many years that isn't shown there either.
There are many different alphabet-soup coding systems used across Network Rail, retailing systems, and the wider railway industry to identify locations on the network. Station names will often be different in different databases; look at any station with an apostrophe in and you'll find it inconsistently named in different places.