How does the website at http://asm.transitdocs.com/extract its data. It just indicates it gets the data from Amtrak's Track-A-Train service but the link is just to the main Amtrak site. I would think that since it updates every train every 4 minutes it would require a lot of overhead. Does the person who created the site actually work with Amtrak to be allowed to extract the data?
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Thirdrail7
Engineer
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No, they don't work for Amtrak. The people behind this site are actually members of this board. They've explained it in the past. Let me see if I can dig up a few of their posts. If not, perhaps they can step out and take a bow.
PS: I believe John Bobinyec and acelafan work on this project. I don't want to misquote them so I won't attempt to explain how it works but neither of them work for Amtrak nor does Amtrak send them the information. I
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Projects:
Amtrak Status Maps, Amtrak Station Status Boards, ASM Alerts : John Bobinyec
Amtrak Status Maps Archive Database: acelafan
AmSnag: PaulIM
asm.transitdocs.com : Train2104
jb
Amtrak Status Maps, Amtrak Station Status Boards, ASM Alerts : John Bobinyec
Amtrak Status Maps Archive Database: acelafan
AmSnag: PaulIM
asm.transitdocs.com : Train2104
jb
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It doesn't take all that much overhead, since I do all the updating on the server side (X users each pull information from me every 4 minutes, but I pull it from Amtrak only once every 3 minutes regardless of whether X is 0, 10, or 1000).
As for the "every train" part of that argument, if you use Amtrak's own site you're also pulling every train. So that's a non-issue.
As for the "every train" part of that argument, if you use Amtrak's own site you're also pulling every train. So that's a non-issue.
Hytec
Lead Service Attendant
Track-a-train is not showing #19 as of 2/6/17 @ 1653 ET. However, Dixielandsoftware is showing that 19 left WIL @ 1620. Please explain.
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Did you check behind all the Regionals and Acelas? My records show data points for 19 (6) at 16:47, 16:48, 16:53, 16:56, and 16:58; so it should've been there.
The two systems have different data sources. Track-A-Train (Amtrak's system), does not use Amtrak's reservations system, Arrow, whereas Dixielandsoftware does.
jb
acelafan
Conductor
I let John and Train2104 do the heavy lifting while I just collect the data and organize it into an archive. Definitely a team effort.
I would be extremely interested in building an app that allows you to have a trains status texted to you... I have looked for an Amtrak API in the past, wish they would support something ... Do you guys have any interest in building an API for your data?
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