Saturday, May 16, 2020

The 2020 Eurorail Contest

Tonight's Eurovision Song Contest has been cancelled. In its place you can watch live Eurorail instead. Listed below are the entries in the 2020 Eurorail Contest - a battle between Europe's live real-time animated maps of trains.



Belgium's entry into this year's Eurorail Contest is Train Map. Train Map is a live map of the Belgium rail network which shows the position of Belgium's trains moving in real-time. If you select an individual train not only can you follow it moving in real-time on the map but you can also see its schedule and its estimated arrival time at every station on its route.



In France SNCF has a nice interactive map which shows French trains in real-time. Réseau SNCF en Temps Réel shows the live position of all SNCF's trains throughout France. Zoom-in on the map and you can watch SNCF trains moving on the map. You can even select individual trains on the map to view the train number and the train's scheduled stops.



Switzerland is home to what is probably the world's longest running live transit map. Vasile Coțovanu's Swiss Railways Network is the oldest nationwide transit map which I know of. Vasile has been a pioneer of real-time transit maps for a number of years and has even released a Transit Map library to help other developers create their very own live animated transit maps. You can also follow Swiss trains in real-time on the Swiss Railways map Trafimage, which shows the entire public transit network of Switzerland in real-time. Trafimage maps trains, trams, buses and even cable-cars.

In the UK Mathew Somerville was also an early pioneer in the development of live real-time transit maps. Mathew's UK Train Times map allows you to view a real-time map of the whole UK rail network. Mathew has also released a Live Tube Map of the London Underground and a Live London Bus Map, showing the location of London's buses in real-time.

If you like real-time transit maps then you might also like:

OSM Tchoutchou - shows real-time trains in France, Ireland, Denmark and Finland
Travic - animated maps of over 700 transit systems around the world.
Mini Tokyo 3D - a live real-time map of Tokyo's public transit system. The map shows the live position of Tokyo's trains in 3D as they move around the city.

For more live real-time transit maps (including trains, planes, boats and automobiles) refer to the Maps Mania real-time tag.

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