How to use TransitRadar

Everything on this site is free and needs no account. This page walks through each tool in turn — what question it answers, which buttons to press, and the one thing about it that most often catches people out.

Start with the question you have

The live map

The map is the busiest page on the site. The side panel plans routes; the controls floating over the map decide what is drawn on it.

1. Tick Live trains. Every train the signalling system is describing inside the area you are looking at appears as a dot, and the count beside the box says how many. Positions update every eight seconds.
2. Narrow it with the two drop-downs that appear: Passenger only or Non-passenger only (empty stock, light engines, freight), and a single operator. Choosing an operator also colours its trains in that operator's brand.
3. Click a dot. A card opens with the service it belongs to, its calling points and how late it is, and from there you can open the train's own page.
4. Tick Live buses for the equivalent on the road network, with its own operator filter, and Disruptions for warning markers where notices are in force.

Reading the dots: the fill is the operator and the ring is how late the train is running. A ring in the “unknown” colour does not mean on time — it means no forecast exists for that train, which is normal for freight. Fainter dots have been placed from the timetable rather than reported by a signal, because some lines have no describer coverage at all; a note under the controls says how many of those are in view. If a whole describer area stops reporting, a warning names the area, because its trains will sit still on the map while really moving. Where the dots come from and when the map stops moving explain all three.

The button in the corner of the map switches the base map between Standard, Light, Dark, Satellite and Terrain. 3D buildings tilts the camera; it works on the Standard map from zoom 14 inwards, which is roughly the scale of a town centre.

Tracing a route along the real track

The side panel on the map draws the path a train would physically take — through the right side of each junction, reversing only where reversing is possible. Pick one of its tabs:

• Stations — type a name, CRS code or TIPLOC and add each stop in the order the train should visit it. Tick Include junctions & non-station locations to force the route through a particular junction.
• Coordinates — enter a latitude and longitude, or tick Clicking the map adds a waypoint and click. Each point is snapped to the nearest reachable track, which is how you route to a yard or a junction.
• Planning ID — search for a real train (the same search the service page uses) and route its booked calling pattern in one go.

Press the route button. Each leg of the answer reports the line references it runs over, the gradient in the direction of travel, electrification, line speed and any temporary speed restriction it crosses; the tick boxes under a result overlay ELRs, gradients, track type, mileposts, junctions and signals. Copy GeoJSON and download hand you the geometry for use elsewhere.

The thing that surprises people: one request can come back as several routes. That is deliberate. If no single train could run the whole way — the line does not connect, or would have to be run the wrong way — the answer is split where a change would be needed, rather than drawn as a path nothing could follow.

The Journey and Bus tabs on the same panel are quicker versions of the journey planners described below, kept beside the map so the answer can be drawn on it.

Departure and arrival boards

1. Open Boards and search for a station by name, three-letter CRS code (KGX) or TIPLOC — or pick one of the busy stations listed underneath.
2. Departures and arrivals appear side by side. Each row gives the booked time, the expected time, the platform and the operator actually running the train today.
3. The tick boxes above the board add to it: Non-passenger includes empty stock, freight and staff trains; Headcode and Planning ID add the operational identifiers as columns; Reason shows why a train is late or cancelled where National Rail has said; Auto-refresh reloads the board every twenty seconds.
4. Click any row to open that train's own page with its full calling pattern.

For a screen on a wall, use Wall-display link: it copies an address that opens a full-screen board which keeps refreshing on its own. The boards page explains what the two times mean and why a delayed train often has no reason attached.

Finding one particular train

The service page takes a search written the way you would say it. Terms combine, so each one you add narrows the answer:

• An operator and a headcode — EMR 1H26, GWR 1A20.
• A time and a station — 12:19 from Corby. The time is a window of ten minutes either side, so you do not need the exact minute.
• Two stations — Corby to St Pancras, which also finds trains calling at both on the way somewhere else.
• A planning ID (UID) such as C12345, or just its first few characters.

Pick a result and the page shows every calling point with booked, expected and actual times, platforms, cancellations at the stops they apply to, the operator's own reason for any delay, the route on a map and — where the operator has published one — the planned formation: which units and carriages are allocated, in order. The detailed view adds the junctions and loops a train passes without stopping. Every result has its own address, so you can bookmark it or send it on.

Why search at all rather than type a headcode? Because the same headcode runs in several places at once — a headcode identifies a train to a signaller within an area, not nationally. Headcodes, UIDs and why the same code runs twice goes into it.

Finding a unit or a bus by its number

On Find a train unit or bus, choose Rail and enter the six-digit number on the side of the train (360107) or of a single carriage. The page shows where the unit last called, which service it is working now, the other services it has worked today, and the days on record it has been allocated at all. Choose Bus and enter the operator's code with the fleet number to see where that bus was last reported.

A train's position here is its last calling point, not a live fix, and a unit works several different services in a day — so the page always tells you which one it has picked and why. Bus vehicles lists every bus seen recently by operator.

Planning a journey

Door-to-door journeys takes a From and a To that can each be a station, a bus stop or a place name — or your current location with the ◎ button — and plans across trains, buses and the walks between them. It prefers the simplest itinerary that arrives at a given time, so it will not send you one stop the wrong way to catch a train you could have waited for.

Fastest direct trains answers a different question: from one station, where can I get to without changing, and how soon? Enter a station and the list can be sorted by Arrival (soonest), Destination or Journey time, and filtered by name. Only trains you can board are listed — empty stock heading for a depot is left out.

Sharing a live journey

Track a journey gives you a link for whoever is meeting you. Pick where you are travelling from and to, choose your train, and send the link. The person opening it sees where the train is, the current predicted arrival and any connection at risk, with no account and no app. Add an email address to be told when the platform changes, when the delay passes fifteen, thirty or sixty minutes, and when you arrive. Links expire after the day of travel.

Stations, and whether the lifts are working

The station directory gathers what several industry datasets know about one station: its address and managing operator, facilities and step-free access, every code the industry uses for it, and its position on the network in miles and chains.

Where Network Rail publishes live status for a station's lifts, a Lifts card lists each one as In service, Out of service or Data not available. That third state is common — the reporting equipment is still being rolled out — and it means exactly what it says: check before you travel. A station with no Lifts card is not a station without lifts; it is one the feed does not report on yet. If step-free access matters to your journey, confirm it with the operator too.

Lines and speed restrictions

Line references is the directory of Engineer's Line References — the codes such as ECM1 that appear on every route leg. Search by code, line name or TIPLOC to see where a line runs, how long it is, which stations sit on it and at what mileage. Temporary speed restrictions lists every stretch of track currently under a reduced limit, filterable by route, with the reason and the dates where the notice gives them.

Punctuality, today and on earlier days

• Train punctuality is the industry's live Public Performance Measure, by operator and sector, updated about once a minute.
• The daily archive has a page for each completed day: what ran, how much of it arrived on time, the longest delays, and every cancellation reason in the operator's own words.
• Performance by operator is the same archive cut by company instead of by date.
• Bus punctuality is our own measurement, journey by journey, for every bus operator in Great Britain.

On the archive's operator tables and the bus league, click a column heading to sort by it and click again to reverse it. Where cancellations are involved the archive publishes two on-time figures — one for the trains that ran and one that counts a cancelled train as a failure — because an operator that cancels a late train would otherwise look more punctual for it. Operators with too few recorded arrivals to rank stay at the foot of a sorted table whichever way it points. How the archive is measured sets out the rules.

Buses and bus stops

Buses has three tabs. Stops finds any bus stop in Great Britain by town, village, stop name or the code on the stop flag, and shows the next departures — live predictions in London, the timetable elsewhere. Search a town rather than a stop and you can browse its stops on a map when you do not know which one you want. Journeys plans a bus-only trip between two stops, and Disruptions lists current bus disruption on its own.

Disruptions

Disruptions lists rail incidents, planned engineering work and bus disruption together. Search for a place, a line or a reason, or filter by operator; the map beside the list shows where each notice applies. Clicking a pin narrows the list to that notice, and Clear brings everything back. Some notices have no pin — one that reads “the Cumbrian coast” names no single place — so they stay in the list without one. Weekend engineering work explains how to read the planned notices.

Using the data in your own project

The rail and bus data behind these pages is available as a JSON API: routes as GeoJSON, boards, journeys and the live maps. Anyone can call it without a key at a shared rate limit; a free API key gives your application its own. The data sources page lists every feed and the licence it comes with, which you will need to credit.

If something looks wrong

The frequently asked questions cover the usual puzzles — a missing train, a dot in the wrong place, a board that disagrees with the station. For how the numbers are produced, see how it works. If it is still wrong, tell us: feed problems are usually reproducible and usually fixable. For anything that affects whether you catch a train, the screens at the station and the operator's own app are the source of record.