Station Status Boards - Wish List

Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Missed stations.

Of late, since the announced changes to the display boards in New York and Philadelphia, the Station Status Boards have been getting an up-tick in activity. There have also been an increase in people using the wrong station codes. The most common ones are:

NYC for NYP

CUS for CHI

PHI for PHL

HOU for HOS

GCT for NYP

Those are the ones that I can figure out. I decided to add a table to convert from the bad station codes to the good ones. At this point I'm not familiar enough to know what people intended when they put in the following over just the last two days:

NCE PIO GEG SMI DNV ISL ILS DLL PJT ABT EMV EMR MTL GSP DCU SQL TIC DCA SFD

RNK RMN ABB NAV ALA RAL NCF UNI PHX ANN OIL BRD WES ABD TTN IMS MIL

If anyone can interpret what people wanted when they input these station codes, I'd appreciate it.

jb
My thoughts:

GEG is the airport code for Spokane - SPK

GSP is Greenville/Spartanburg, SC - GRV

DCA is Washington National - WAS or maybe ALX. :giggle:

MTL - Montreal? - MTR

RAL - Raleigh, NC - RGH

ANN - Ann Arbor, MI - ARB

PJT - Maybe Princton Junction - PJC

TIC - Ticonderoga, NY - FTC

BRD - Bridgeport (BDP) or Bradenton (BDT - OK - who is looking up buses)?

NCE is Nice, France. No clue domestically.

EMV and EMR could be Emeryville - EMY

DNV - Danville, VA or IL - DAN and DVI, respectively

ABD - Aberdeen, MD - ABE

MIL - Milwaukee - MKE

NCF - NC State Fair, NC - NSF (Seasonal)

Valid Amtrak codes that don't have trains:

ABB - Abbotsford-Colby - Bus Stop, WI

ABT - Abbotsford - Bus Station, BC

ALA - Alanson - Bus Stop, MI

RNK - Roanoke - Civic Center Bus Stop, VA

RMN - Rochester - Bus Stop, MN

SFD is the old code for Sanford, FL - Regular Trains.

SMI - Sainte Marie - Bus Stop, MI

WES - Los Angeles - Westwood (UCLA) - Bus Stop, CA
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Missed stations.

Of late, since the announced changes to the display boards in New York and Philadelphia, the Station Status Boards have been getting an up-tick in activity. There have also been an increase in people using the wrong station codes. The most common ones are:

NYC for NYP

CUS for CHI

PHI for PHL

HOU for HOS

GCT for NYP

Those are the ones that I can figure out. I decided to add a table to convert from the bad station codes to the good ones. At this point I'm not familiar enough to know what people intended when they put in the following over just the last two days:

NCE PIO GEG SMI DNV ISL ILS DLL PJT ABT EMV EMR MTL GSP DCU SQL TIC DCA SFD

RNK RMN ABB NAV ALA RAL NCF UNI PHX ANN OIL BRD WES ABD TTN IMS MIL

If anyone can interpret what people wanted when they input these station codes, I'd appreciate it.

jb
My thoughts:

GEG is the airport code for Spokane - SPK

GSP is Greenville/Spartanburg, SC - GRV

DCA is Washington National - WAS or maybe ALX. :giggle:

MTL - Montreal? - MTR

RAL - Raleigh, NC - RGH

ANN - Ann Arbor, MI - ARB

PJT - Maybe Princton Junction - PJC

TIC - Ticonderoga, NY - FTC

BRD - Bridgeport (BDP) or Bradenton (BDT - OK - who is looking up buses)?

NCE is Nice, France. No clue domestically.

EMV and EMR could be Emeryville - EMY

DNV - Danville, VA or IL - DAN and DVI, respectively

ABD - Aberdeen, MD - ABE

MIL - Milwaukee - MKE

NCF - NC State Fair, NC - NSF (Seasonal)

Valid Amtrak codes that don't have trains:

ABB - Abbotsford-Colby - Bus Stop, WI

ABT - Abbotsford - Bus Station, BC

ALA - Alanson - Bus Stop, MI

RNK - Roanoke - Civic Center Bus Stop, VA

RMN - Rochester - Bus Stop, MN

SFD is the old code for Sanford, FL - Regular Trains.

SMI - Sainte Marie - Bus Stop, MI

WES - Los Angeles - Westwood (UCLA) - Bus Stop, CA

I agree with almost everything you stated but I'm wondering if they meant Westerly, Rhode Island for WES. Additionally, PJT was the old city code for downtown Princeton, NJ which is a different stop than Princeton Junction, NJ when the Clockers operated.

Additionally, I'm wondering if DLL is Dillion, South Carolina, DCU is Washington DC-Union Station, RNM is Raton, New Mexico and is DNV actually Denver, Colorado?
 
It's a Solari Board. It should look and function like one. What's with all these impatient people who can't wait a minute or two for all the lines to appear? How would they have ever coped with the 1950s?
 
It's a Solari Board. It should look and function like one. What's with all these impatient people who can't wait a minute or two for all the lines to appear? How would they have ever coped with the 1950s?
It was more a situation that if you tried to run the solari simulation on an old computer, it did take an unacceptably long time - even for me. So I created the faster options.

jb
 
My first time seeing this. Nice job! One question: Is there a time limit on how early a train shows up on the board? Meaning that if the local time is 10am, trains arriving at 8pm don't show up on the board even if there is space available.
 
My first time seeing this. Nice job! One question: Is there a time limit on how early a train shows up on the board? Meaning that if the local time is 10am, trains arriving at 8pm don't show up on the board even if there is space available.
The visibility limit is 8 hours. It keeps down the amount of processing that must be done.

jb
 
Someone has proposed a change that I'd like to have y'all consider.

See Amtrak Station Status Boards . The last column Is "Revised Time" (choose the 'long' format for the Solari type board). This is simply calculated as the scheduled time adjusted by how late or early the train is currently running. The suggestion is to use Amtrak's "estimated" time rather than do this simplistic calculation.

Amtrak's estimations have gotten better over the years to the point where I'm considering doing this. The question is: Can anyone see a reason not to?

jb

PS I'd really not want to do both and then have an option to allow the user to choose. It's A LOT more work.
 
Either way is fine with me ... one thing I have run across is the 3 letter station codes. There have been time when I forgot to use CAPS and it returned the result that the station did not exist ...

I haven't used the board recently - maybe this has been addressed ... if it has, please disregard this comment.
 
I see no reason not to change the way actual times are shown as you suggested. You're right, Amtrak no longer predicts trains will travel at hyperspeed to reach their next stop. :D Thanks for all your great work, John! As a programmer myself, I can understand the complexity.
 
Back
Top