Welcome To Railnet

Railnet is a railway simulation framework. The system has an simulation executive that can load railway networks (including track diagrams, signalling and routing information) from a back-end database and build it into an internal model. The system can then operate trains (to specified timetables) over the virtual network.

Initially, this is being put together as a signalling simulation but where it gets interesting is that the client for the signalling simulation is a web browser communicating through XML HTTP requests to the simulation executive. This means you'll be able to log-on and run the simulation from any machine, re-connect to sessions, or have several machines viewing the running simulation to provide timetables, train information and the routing screens all on separate PCs and monitors.

As noted above, the system has been designed to operate trains through the virtual network itself, thus giving a good signalling simulation. The plan, however is to go bigger and use the server-based approach to facilitate remote trains - in short, Railnet will ultimately allow driver simulation to be used in conjunction with the signalling simulation in a single network!

For this reason, considerable effort has gone into adding extra information into the network maps so, for example, direction and theatre indications will be correctly generated by the system so an effective driver simulation can be implemented.

Currently, work is progressing on the back-end of the system, but once complete it'll be made available on this site - edition features and pricing have not yet been finalised.

Feel free to bookmark this page and visit again soon if you're interested!

Railnet Blog

10th Feb, 2011
Not much happening on the simulation front... the design is still there, but I've not had time to look at it in ages. I have just updated the interactive "busiest stations" map at http://railnet.biz/ukrail/ though. This now has data up to 2009/10 in it.
7th May, 2008
It's been a while, see previous entry about being busy!! Anyway, I'm gonna get back to the simulation soon, but first I played about a bit with the Google Maps API and added in the ORR passenger data. You can browse UK rail stations by top 10 numbers of passengers at http://railnet.biz/ukrail/. In case you care, the database has most mainline heavy rail stations in the UK in it, including Northern Ireland but because this was a quick mash-up using the database I created, you won't see them all. I'll add some more data, search and display things another day...
29th August, 2007
It's been a slow summer working on this as I've been pretty busy. Hopefully I'll get something going next month to demo.
5th June, 2007: Timetables
Finally, there is a test timetable inside railnet - this took a bit of devising as there's lots of ways to do it! In order to keep all the information in a format that will allow the software to have multiple uses, a lot of time was spent on design and thinking it through, but it's now in and work is now progressing on the main simulation executive that inserts trains (from other signalling areas, yards, etc) into the running simulation for routing.
23rd May, 2007: Rendering
Deciding to use a web browser as the primary interface for Railnet's signalling simulation (and other content-based informational pages) seems to be paying off. The network rendering now works along with bindings so the user can interact with the model using the mouse.
(C) Railnet 2011