New Members Area Coming Soon
Rail Record are delighted to announce some exciting upcoming new features that will enhance your experience.
Coming June 2019, we will be introducing a members area to the website. The members area will enable you to contribute to the live train times feature of the website, increasing its deliverability and functionality to other visitors.
We won’t go into too much detail at this stage but here’s a summary of what we will be offering.
User Account System
- You’ll be able to register to create a free account and log in.
- You’ll be able to follow trains including mark sighted / had for haulage.
- You’ll be able to mark locations as “Visited”.
Any contributions you make will be visible on the account overview page, where you can go back and modify or delete them.
User Uploaded Allocations
Complementing our live train times feature, you’ll be able to add sighted allocations to train schedules. Other members will be able to search for trains by number and see their recent workings. This feature relies on user contribution to remain up to date.
You may have already seen some allocations on services whilst we test it.
Live Train Schedule Email / SMS Alerts
The Rail Record members area will allow you to get Email and SMS notifications about train services, including:
- Alerts on schedule activation.
- Alerts on service cancellation, including additional alert if it is reinstated.
- Alerts on service performance – enter a numeric limit X, and if a service exceeds X minutes early or X minutes late, you’ll get notified.
- Alerts when service departs origin.
- Alerts when service reaches a defined location.
- Alerts when a schedule’s headcode changes – eg from 6Z90 to 0Z90.
- Alert if the origin of a service changes.
Email alerts will be free, but limited to 15 email alerts per user at any one time. SMS alerts will require purchasing SMS credits, although these will be reasonably priced.
SMS alert pricing will be £1 for 10 SMS notifications, £5 for 50 SMS notifications and £10 for 200 SMS notifications. The £10 SMS will also remove the 15 email limit from your account – permanently. Payments for SMS purchases can be made with PayPal.
The SMS / Email alert system has been tested and is working well, we need to make a few aesthetic tweaks to the SMS messages themselves and further test their reliability in the field.
The aim of the alert system is so you can be notified about train services with the information that you want to know without having to keep refreshing the live train times schedule page
Location Information Contribution
In addition to user sighted service allocations and alerts, we’re also working on user information page for each timing point location on the railway network (stations, junctions and some lineside locations). You’ll be able to contribute to these information pages.
These location information pages will list information about locations, that will hopefully help you when visiting new places so you can prepare in advance. You’ll be able to upload a photo as well.
When deciding on where to go for something interesting like a test train, I often try to find out a few things: are there fences or grated gates at the ends of the platforms to prevent tresspass, that might affect one’s photo? Or if its routed on the fast lines, are there fences or locked gates between the platforms limiting access to the fast line platforms that i’d have to lean over to get a good shot? If I am going to a rural footbridge or lineside, i’d like to know if theres toilets nearby or if there is parking, or perhaps a cafe / shop. You’ll be able to contribute this sort of information as a Rail Record member. Its only small but will hopefully be useful to some.
You’ll also be able to mark TIPLOCs as ‘Visited’, so if you’re inspired to visit every station in the UK, perhaps this will help you.
Coming June 2019
We plan to make this feature available in June this year which we are on target to meet. We have tested most things up to this current point and most seems to be working. Throughout March we will give a few people some secret access so they can test it out and report any problems as well as further build new features. Through April we will be implementing fixes to those problems and strengthening security, then final testing in May to ensure everything is working well; such as the email / sms alert scheduler etc.
Author: matt
Owner of Rail Record