Great Western Coffee Shop

SNCF announced a new train mapping function would appear on sncf.com today. However, it was late, or at least not where they said it would be, and since then the site has gone down. It has now come up with this new feature, though I don't think it is working 100% yet (though a browser other than Chrome might do better).

You get in via sncf.com/Info trafic en temps r^el and select D^couvrir at the bottom of the box, or else here (http://www.sncf.com/fr/geolocalisation?data-map-zoom=6&data-map-livemap-unmatched=true). It shows TGVs and Intercit^s, some international, and I've glimpsed TERs too but not stably. The maps themselves are very detailed, and it has some pretty tricks like zooming in on the trains's position on the line. But I think it is trying to geolocalise users and screwing up, among other things.

If you want to see what they are aiming at, you might like to have a look at raildar.fr (http://www.raildar.fr/#lat=46.815&lng=6.888&zoom=6) (no relation). This is a private effort at the same thing, and I think it really does show up SNCF's effort. It was all done just for fun, and with only the timetable available from an official feed - everything else is scraped off public sites. Given that, the level of finish and performance is really rather impressive.

This just about sums up my experiences of la SNCF !

Does it huff at you in disgust when you feign lack of French language skills and ignorance of the need to compost your ticket before boarding the train?