What changed on Spotatrain
This is the running log of what changes on the site. Every entry is dated the day the change actually went live, not the day it was written — a date that is off by a week is worse than no date at all.
It is deliberately incomplete. Plenty of work goes into the admin tools, the tests and the plumbing behind the site, and none of it belongs here: a log full of things you cannot see is a log nobody reads. What you will find instead is anything that changes what the site does for you. There is no roadmap section either, because announcing dates we have not met yet would be the fastest way to make this page untrustworthy.
Looking for new spots, journeys and contributors rather than site changes? That lives on What's New.
- New
Suggest a missing rail event
Members can now suggest a rail event we are missing, straight from the events page: its name, the organizer’s official page, the town and, if they like, a pin on the map. We read the official site before listing anything.
- Improved
Easier saved items and lists
You can now add any saved item to a list straight from your Favorites or from another list, see at a glance which lists already hold a place, and find your public profile from the account menu. Saving before signing in now completes once you are signed in, and every page can be shared.
- Fixed
Saved events show the right picture
Events in your saved items, lists and on the saved map now show the same picture as on the events page, instead of a photo of a nearby museum or railway.
- New
Model train shows
The events calendar now lists 37 model railway shows and holiday train exhibitions in the US, the UK and Canada, from the Amherst Railroad Hobby Show and TrainFest to the New York Botanical Garden, Model Rail Scotland and Alexandra Palace. Every date is read on the organizer’s own site.
- New
Steam excursions
The events calendar now covers steam: 24 galas and excursions in the US, the UK and Canada, from Flying Scotsman at Swanage to Nickel Plate 765 and Tornado. As always, every date is read on the operator’s own site.
- New
49 more Christmas trains
The Christmas train calendar now lists 104 rides, with new ones from Michigan to Oregon, in Scotland, Wales and British Columbia. As before, every date is read on the operator’s own site.
- New
Halloween and pumpkin trains
47 Halloween and pumpkin train rides are now in the events calendar, across the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, with this October's dates read from each operator's own site.
- New
Railway events: Christmas trains and more
A new calendar of railway events starts with 55 Christmas train rides across the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. Dates are read from each operator's official site, and you can add an event to your calendar or report a date that looks wrong.
- Improved
Country pages: a map of their states and provinces
Each country page now opens its list of regions with a map: one bubble per state or province, sized by how many places it holds. Click a bubble to open that region.
- New
Destinations: city pages, state flags and a world map
Every destination page now shows a photo on each card (with its photographer’s credit), a map for each live cam, and the railroads you can watch there. Cities with at least three places get their own page, states and provinces show their flag, and the destinations index opens on a clickable world map grouped by continent. You can also filter a page to spots, experiences or live cams only.
- Improved
Maps that stay put, and “View all” that takes you to the full list
Hovering a card on the hub pages now highlights its marker without moving the map; a small target button on each card zooms to it. “Update list as I move the map” sits on the map itself, on all five hubs. On the home page, “View all” goes to each pillar’s page and Live Cams move up. Popups no longer open off-screen, journey maps use the same stage icons as the route timeline, and a new “FRA details (US)” option shows grade crossings, bridges and mileposts when you zoom in.
- New
Redesigned live cam pages: the map, the weather and the next train on screen
Every railway live cam page now shows where the camera films on a map, with the local weather for the next seven days and the hours of daylight, golden hour and blue hour at the camera. For cameras in the United States, the page adds how many through trains the railroad reports to the Federal Railroad Administration, day and night, the nearest grade crossing, bridge and yards, and which Amtrak and VIA Rail passenger trains pass in front of the camera, with the next one due from the official timetables. The stream operator’s own description of the traffic stays quoted alongside, and every figure names its source.
- New
Redesigned spot pages: plan your visit, then see what runs
Every trainspotting location now opens with what you need on the ground: the map, directions, parking and the conditions for the next seven days, including sunrise, sunset and golden hour. The trains section shows how many through trains the railroad reports to the Federal Railroad Administration, day and night, the nearest grade crossing, bridge and yards, and which Amtrak and VIA Rail passenger trains pass the spot, with their scheduled times from the official timetables. Spots without a photo show a Street View of the location, and every source is cited.
- Improved
Every spot and camera now tells you what the railroad calls this place
Spot and live cam pages have a new panel, On the network here, that names the nearest grade crossing and the nearest named railroad bridge — with the crossing's official FRA number, the street it carries, the subdivision, the milepost, whether horns are sounded there, and how far away it is. That is the language railroads and camera operators use themselves, and it makes a location checkable: you can walk up to the crossing and read the same number off the blue sign. It all comes from the Federal Railroad Administration's public inventories, and each panel says which inventory and from what date. Where we have nothing — outside the United States, where these inventories stop — the panel simply does not appear. It will never tell you there is no crossing nearby; it only ever tells you what is on record.
- Improved
Railroad names are now links wherever they appear
When a spot, a live cam or a journey description mentions BNSF, Union Pacific, CSX, Norfolk Southern, CN or CPKC, the name is now a link straight to that railroad's page — its map, its spots, its cameras and its subdivisions. It works in the running text of every page, not just in the data fields, which is where most of these mentions actually live: 266 spotting locations and 121 live cams name at least one of the six. On a spot page, the railroad, subdivision and milepost also move up into Quick Information, at the top of the sidebar where you look first. Nothing is guessed: only spellings we have recorded become links, and two-letter reporting marks are deliberately left alone — 'CN' on its own is just as likely to be the CN Tower.
- New
Railroad pages now show the network and the yards
Each railroad page just got two more layers to explore. Its map now traces the company's main line from official public rail data, so you can see the route a railroad actually runs, not just the spots and cameras along it. And every page lists the railroad's yards, starting with the ones near a documented spot or live cam — each shown with the distance and a link — followed by the full list of yards on that railroad. It is the same idea as the subdivisions already on each page, one level bigger: the places where trains are made up, not just watched going by.
- New
Browse spots and live cams by railroad
Railfans think in railroads and subdivisions, and Spotatrain now does too. Every spotting location names the company that runs the track in front of it, the subdivision or line, and the milepost when the operator publishes one. Six new railroad pages gather it all: BNSF, Union Pacific, CSX, Norfolk Southern, CN and CPKC, each with a map of its spots and live cams, the cameras pointed at its track, and its spots grouped subdivision by subdivision — from the Pittsburgh Line to the Cajon Subdivision. Each spot and camera page now shows its railroad and links back to that page. Nothing is guessed: where the operator has not published a subdivision or a milepost, the field simply stays empty.
- Improved
Live cams now link to every place they film
A railway camera often watches a place that is documented here more than once — the Galesburg camera looks at a spotting location that is also a stop on famous long-distance runs. Until now a camera page could name only one of them, so the others were simply invisible from the camera. Camera pages now list every documented place in shot, each labelled with what it is — a spotting location, an experience, an epic journey or a mega project — and every one of those pages shows the camera back. Nothing here is guessed: a camera is tied to a place by hand, with the measured distance between the two on screen.
- Improved
Live cam cards say what a camera costs, before you click
Most of the cameras we list are free to watch, but not all of them: some operators ask for a free account, and a few charge a subscription. Until now you only found that out after opening the page. Cards on the live cams hub now carry a small label — “Free account”, “Paid extras” or “Subscription” — and a new filter lets you show only what is free to watch right now, or only what needs an account or a subscription. Cameras that are simply free stay unlabelled, so the label always means something.
- Improved
Live cam cards now show the camera, and name who runs it
Cards linking to a live cam used to be a blank grey square, because we do not host or capture anyone’s stream. They now show the preview frame the operator publishes on YouTube, with the operator’s name underneath. It is a still image, not a live view — and where no preview is published, the card simply names the operator instead of pretending.
- Fixed
Related cards are readable again on narrow pages
The “Related on Spotatrain” cards at the foot of every page now size themselves to the column they sit in, instead of guessing from the width of your browser window. On live cam pages they had squeezed down to about 105 pixels wide. Cam cards without a photo also show a camera icon now, rather than a generic map pin.
- Improved
Live cam pages now link to what is around them
Every live cam page ends with the same “Related on Spotatrain” section the other four sections have always had: other cams nearby, more cams in the same state or country, the spots and experiences within reach, and any journey or mega-project passing through. Distances are real, and a block that has nothing honest to show simply does not appear.
- Improved
Live cam pages now tell you what the camera actually shows
Every live cam page has a new “Camera details” panel: whether the feed carries sound, what the camera is pointed at, the kind of traffic that passes, how many cameras sit at the location, whether the view can move, and the date we last checked the feed. Where the operator publishes how busy the line is, we now quote them. Anything we have not verified stays off the page rather than being guessed.
- New
Dog-friendly train rides, one click from the homepage
Travelling with a dog? The homepage now points straight to our dog-friendly guide — train rides, heritage railways and museums where dogs are genuinely welcome, each policy checked on the operator’s own page. The count you see is live: it only counts places we have actually verified.
- Improved
Clearer search titles for journeys and experiences
Journey pages now show up in search results as “Route Map, Tickets & Guide”, and experience pages as “Tickets, Hours & Visitor Guide” — with the city added when the name alone could be anywhere. Same page, same content: just a title that says what you will find there.
- Improved
Destinations is in the Explore menu
Browsing by country was only reachable from the footer. Explore now has a Destinations entry, and it opens the whole geography — 28 countries, each with its regions, spots, experiences and live cams.
- Improved
Destination pages say what they hold, in one line
Country and region pages showed a total, then made you scroll to find out what it was made of. They now say it straight away — "11 spots, 2 experiences and 9 live cams" — and, where the places actually cluster, they name the towns. That last sentence only appears when the data supports it: on most regions the places are too scattered for it to mean anything, so the page says nothing rather than guessing.
- New
Every region page now has a map
Region pages like Illinois or Quebec listed their spots, experiences and live cams but had no map. They now carry the same interactive map as the spot and live cam hubs — same layers, same railway overlay, same fullscreen. The layers a region actually has are on by default; the others stay available. Places without published coordinates are still listed, they simply are not plotted.
- Improved
One page for every train spotting location
The spot directory and the spot hub listed exactly the same 277 locations — the same links, twice. They are now a single page: the hub, with its map, its search box, its type filters and its Near me button. The old /all-spots/ address still works and takes you there. Searching from the home page now carries your term straight into the hub instead of dropping it.
- New
Follow what changes on Spotatrain
Spotatrain now keeps a public log of what changes on the site. Anything that affects what you actually see — a new kind of page, a fix to something that was wrong, a feature that behaves differently — gets an entry here, dated the day it went live rather than the day it was written. Work that only touches the admin tools or the plumbing stays out of it, which is what keeps this page short enough to be worth reading. Nothing to sign up for: the page is public, and an RSS feed is there if you would rather follow from a reader.
- Fixed
The "nearby" suggestions are actually nearby now
Every page carries blocks suggesting what else is worth seeing around it. They were sorted by distance and cut at a fixed count, with no ceiling at all — so a Welsh tramway page could offer you a spot in Canada, 4,581 km away, under the heading "Related Spots". Those headings now carry a distance ceiling: 100 km for anything that says "near", and 25 km for spots described as lining a route. When nothing qualifies, the block either disappears or changes to a heading that is true — "Railway Experiences in Wales" instead of a false promise of proximity. Where geography has nothing to offer, pages now fall back to a shared theme, and the heading says so.