About Rail

Anyone who has stood under a departure board watching a platform flip from "expected 8" to "9" with two minutes to spare knows the problem. The information existed before the board showed it. Rail is built to get it to you first.

You pick the train you are on, where you board and where you get off, and optionally the connection you are hoping to make. From then on Rail watches the live rail feeds and sends you a notification when the platform is confirmed or changed, when the train is delayed or cancelled, or when your connection stops working. A Live Activity keeps the essentials on your lock screen so you do not have to open anything.

It is deliberately narrow. One journey at a time, one number per screen, and an honest distinction between what is confirmed and what is still a prediction. Think Flighty, for trains.

Rail is a trust product: it is only worth having if it is right and fast. So every raw message from the rail feeds is archived immutably before it is parsed, every alert can be traced back to the exact message that caused it, and every notification records how long it took from the feed to your phone. Integrity monitors watch the feeds for silence, lag and unexpected changes. When the feed is uncertain, the app says so instead of guessing.

It contains data from National Rail Enquiries (Darwin) and Network Rail Open Data, used under their licences. That data can itself be wrong or late, which is why Rail is a faster way to hear the news, not a replacement for official announcements at the station.

It has no analytics SDK, no ads and no tracking, and it never asks for your location. What it does hold is set out plainly in the privacy policy.

Hey, I'm Sammy Sergi — an indie developer based in Australia. I build simple, useful apps that solve real problems without the bloat.

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Have feedback, questions, or a platform change Rail missed? Reach out at sam@sammysergi.com.