Train Departures

Overview

A simple project that uses web scraping to capture UK Train departures from the Nation Rail website.

This is currently using the OJP board which as of August 2023 looks like it will be replaced with an improved board.

Current API

To fetch a train departure board it is as easy as referencing the project and calling:

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"github.com/bperryman/traindeps"
	"os"
)

func main() {
	board, err := traindeps.LoadFromInternet("STATION")
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Printf("Error loading the departure board")
		os.Exit(-1)
	}
	for _, dep := range board.Departures {
		fmt.Printf("To: %s, leaving from: %s\n", dep.Destination, dep.Platform)
    }
}

Here STATION is the 3-letter code, for example KGX is the code for London Kings Cross. A list of these can be found on Wikipedia

History

During a particularly bad spell of train lateness I got so fed up that I wrote a scraper to pull down all the delays on the journeys that I would make. Just for kicks I ended up writing this in Common Lisp, Elixir, Python and the go version here.

Then the pandemic happened, along with a lack off journeys into work, and this project just sort of languished. Now I want to use this for a notice board, based around the Pimoroni Galactic Unicorn

yes, yes it looked cool and I bought it, so now I have a solution looking for a problem (again).

TODO

Rename the package to something more go friendly.
Update the scraper to retrieve the departure boards from the new presentation (currently beta?)
Update to include any special notifiers that are displayed - for example delays due to bad weather or special services being run
Allow for a specific destination - so your journey into work for example.
Allow for intermediate stations on the journey to be retrieved.
Update any testing.