Edunology - Saumya Aggarwal

RailRadar: Real time train display for Indian Railways

RailRadar, an application which gives you muscle to track Indian Railways trains in real time. It uses the Google Maps platform to deliver timings, location, station, routes and schedules of more than 6,500 trains on a real time basis.

RailRadar has been developed by Centre for Railway Information System and uses a top level colour coding system to mark trains as blue and red. Blue arrows indicate trains running on time while red arrows are those which have been delayed. Users can use the + and – buttons to zoom in and zoom out of the map.

Clicking on an arrow will reveal train details and its route on the map. The details include the train’s number and name, last stop, station at which it will halt next and the train’s status as on-time or delayed in minutes. The real time status will generally be on a 5 minute delay.

Few observations:

1. Ease of use
2. Google Maps interface which looks familiar
3. Website loads quickly, no comparison with sucking IRCTC site
4. Most importantly, it gives loads of information like estimated arrival, halt duration, last stop, train status, exact location, timetables.

In nutshell, it is welcome step with right use of technology.