The Real-Time Animated Transit Map
On Monday I reviewed two animated maps that simulate one day's worth of train travel in countries across the world. Both of these simulations used conventional geographic maps, with the trains shown in their real-world geographical locations. But wouldn't it be cool to see this data animated on a proper schematic transit map? I Love Trains does exactly that. It is a simulation of an entire day's train traffic (2026/07/13) in the Netherlands, visualized on top of the official NS network map ( download here ). The map itself is built as an SVG, with the Dutch railway network and surrounding geography drawn as scalable vector graphics. This makes it possible to create a highly stylized version of the official NS network map while retaining the crisp lines and labels of a conventional transit diagram. The simulation then brings this otherwise static map to life, animating every train as it travels across the network throughout the day. If you'd like to see where trains a...
