Enhanced departure boards on top of these pages

[whole diary]

[Bmblbzzz]

1. Are GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) thinking of starting services in Tonga* - according to Wikipedia there are no operations railways or trams there so it would be a big investment.
2. Also why would the people of Tonga need information on GWR's services in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom)? 

* .to is the domain name for Tonga

It's to distract the competition. What GWR are actually after in the South Pacific is narrow gauge sugar wagons in Fiji – they have great potential as conversions for UK commuter services. 

[grahame]

The difference I've tried to make is not just to list all the upcoming departures, but also let people put in their destination and have it filter out direct trains to there.  Some stations such as Salisbury do have a big "next fastest train to ..." board, but it's far from universal and not always visible when you're changing trains.

A further tuning update this morning ... I noted a "special notice" on Newbury when I added that to the list of supported stations, and I am now capturing and reporting such special notices:

[SandTEngineer]

Good stuff Grahame.  I like the number of coaches bit.

[Thatcham Crossing]

Great stuff Grahame, it was just your comment (in your original reply to me re. Newbury)...

I've added it to the pulldown menu list on all the other stations

that had me a bit confused....I can't see that, I just see the list (in the site header) of the specific stations you've chosen under "Next departures"?

If I've misunderstood, I'm happy just to bookmark http://www.mrug.org.uk/nby.html, thanks.

[TonyK]

It's to distract the competition. What GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) are actually after in the South Pacific is narrow gauge sugar wagons in Fiji – they have great potential as conversions for UK^▸ (United Kingdom) commuter services. 

I had a ride on one of those in St Kitts a few years back, and thoroughly recommend it next time you're there. The complimentary rum punch was good too, making people more beautiful as the ride progressed.

Standing, freezing, on the footbridge at Chippenham at lunchtime today ... counting passengers into the station as part of a survey.  OK - I admit it - I got bored just standing and got my laptop out ... the experimental work I was doing yesterday for onward trains has been expanded a bit and you'll find a departure board for around 20 key stations on the top of each page on the forum.

Nice work grahame! Now why had no-one thought of that before?

[grahame]

Standing, freezing, on the footbridge at Chippenham at lunchtime today ... counting passengers into the station as part of a survey.  OK - I admit it - I got bored just standing and got my laptop out ... the experimental work I was doing yesterday for onward trains has been expanded a bit and you'll find a departure board for around 20 key stations on the top of each page on the forum.

Nice work grahame! Now why had no-one thought of that before?

Probably because no-one had ever been as stupid as I was yesterday to spend two hours feeding my n**s off at Chippenham, watching what a high proportion of people try to get out of the barriers on their outward journey with the return half of their tickets 

I have added a few more stations ... Newton Abbot, Plymouth, Newport (South Wales), Frome, Worcester Shrub Hill, Swansea and Hereford - in each case stations where "what is the next train to xxxxxx" may not be obvious for all destinations.  Each has a shortform URL like http://www.mrug.org.uk/ply.html and each can also be found by using one of the other stations at the top of these pages and then using the pulldown menu on the page you're given.  I may look to add a direct pulldown on the top of this page for all stations implemented.

Please let me know of any glaring omissions, noting that data may be limited for none-GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) operated stations. 

[ChrisB]

I hope uou mean *freezing*.....!!!

[welshman]

Slick and useful piece of programming.  Well done Grahame.   Seemingly the number of coaches on departures from CDF^» (Cardiff - next trains) is a secret.

[chuffed]

'Feeding' for 'Freezing'. One of the best typos ever from graham's phroson phingers.
The guard would have had his X certificate red flag signed by the British Board of Film censors, out for sure !

[Reginald25]

Yeah. Impressive access to travel information in one page, and its all on the Melksham Users site!

[bradshaw]

Came across this on the Somerset Travel site. Slick on the station and you get details of the trains and station

https://www.travelsomerset.co.uk/rail/

[Gordon the Blue Engine]

The drop down list for Reading doesn't show Pangbourne (nor Tilehurst, Goring & S or Cholsey): these stations do however show on Didcot Parkway.

[grahame]

The drop down list for Reading doesn't show Pangbourne (nor Tilehurst, Goring & S or Cholsey): these stations do however show on Didcot Parkway.

I've just taken a look - got the same result.

The next departure for Pangbourne  and the other places as I write (15:27) isn't until 16:14 and that's not come up on the departure board yet - not one of the next 20 (or whatever it is) departures that are shown.   And the pulldown is dynamic - generated from the list of calling places of the next departures.

Not quite so many trains  call at Didcot, so there's always going to be an hour plus of data there ...

[martyjon]

https://www.travelsomerset.co.uk/rail/

Yes but would it be more appropriate to use/display the train head code rather than the train_uid, two platform staff at say Taunton would more likely use and understand what '2C77 will follow the late running Cross Country into platform 2 which is going to terminate at Exeter skipping the Tiv Parkway stop' rather than 'C55614 will follow the late running C50182 .... etc'.

[grahame]

Came across this on the Somerset Travel site. Slick on the station and you get details of the trains and station

https://www.travelsomerset.co.uk/rail/

Interesting data source behind that - https://developer.transportapi.com  . With the explosion of open source data ...