The modern home for everyone who loves trains
Spotatrain brings together everything rail lovers care about — where to spot trains, where to visit, which journeys to ride, and which projects are reshaping the future of rail — on a single interactive map that spans the world.
A quick look at what's on the map right now:
- spots
- 275
- experiences
- 60
- epic journeys
- 16
- mega-projects
- 4
- photos
- 964
- countries
- 17
spots
experiences
epic journeys
mega-projects
photos
countries
How Spotatrain started
Long before there was a website, there were game maps. Spotatrain's founder is an urban planner who has been laying out cities — and the rail networks that hold them together — since his teens, in games like SimCity and Transport Tycoon. Trains were always at the center of the plan.
Years later, watching his own child fall for trains rekindled that fascination, and sent us looking for a good place to find railway spots, plan trips around them, and see what others had photographed. We kept coming up short: the railfan world had no shortage of passion, but no modern, unified home for it.
So we set out to build one. Pairing that lifelong love of rail networks with a deep interest in artificial intelligence, Spotatrain began in 2025, went quiet for a while, then came back to life in earnest at the start of 2026 — and it's grown month after month since.
The gap we set out to fill
Railfan information has always been scattered: aging forums, Facebook groups, blogs that come and go. Most of it is regional, a lot of it is dated, and almost none of it helps you actually plan a visit. We wanted one place that is global, modern, and practical — a map you can explore, with the real-world details that bigger travel sites skip: access, coordinates, train frequencies, the best time to go, and photography tips.
Four pillars of rail, one map
Most resources cover a single slice of the rail world. Spotatrain is the only modern platform we know of that unites all four — community-rated, photo-rich, mapped, and open to everyone.
Spotting locations
Viewpoints, curves, bridges and stations around the world, with access notes and the best times to visit.
Railway experiences
Heritage railways, museums, depot visits and themed rides you can actually book.
Epic journeys
The world's iconic long-distance voyages, mapped stage by stage with operator, rolling stock and official booking.
Mega-projects
The tunnels, viaducts and high-speed corridors reshaping rail, tracked with milestones and budgets.
How we make the content
Here's something we're upfront about: no single person could research, write, and keep this much rail content current by hand. Spotatrain is powered by artificial intelligence — and that's the passion this project was really born from. AI does the heavy lifting of gathering and drafting. But nothing goes live on trust alone: every page is checked against official sources — operators, museums, heritage railways, government project pages — and reviewed by a human before it's published. AI lets us cover the world; official sources and a careful human pass keep it honest.
Who's behind Spotatrain
Spotatrain is an independent project run by François, its founder and editor — an urban planner by trade, pulled toward the rails since childhood and kept there by the challenge of building something genuinely useful. It's published under the Geospotter Studios name, a small personal banner for niche travel and outdoor projects rather than a big company. No advertising team, no investors, no SEO-driven editorial calendar — just one person, a lot of AI, and a growing audience.
Free to use — and honest about how it stays that way
Spotatrain is free, and we'd like to keep it that way. Running and growing it costs real money every month — hosting, data, and tools. For now those bills are offset by display advertising and a small number of clearly disclosed affiliate links on the gear and journey pages, never on spotting profiles. Donations through Buy Me a Coffee genuinely help and are always appreciated. And if an opportunity comes along that can secure the site's future without compromising what it stands for, we'll look at it carefully — and openly.
Come aboard
Explore the map, create an account to contribute, or help keep the site running.
Spotatrain is a global rail tourism hub: a single interactive map and database that unites the four things rail lovers care about most — the best trainspotting locations, the railway experiences worth a day out, the legendary journeys still worth riding, and the mega-projects shaping the future of rail. Wherever you are, you can explore community-rated spots, browse hundreds of credited photos, and find the practical details needed to plan a visit.
Built as an independent, AI-powered project and validated against official sources, Spotatrain aims to be the modern, worldwide reference the railfan community never quite had — open to everyone, free to use, and growing every month.