Age Suitability

Rail is a train-tracking tool. You choose a UK train journey, and the app tells you which platform it leaves from and whether it is on time, sending a notification if that changes. That is the whole app.

It is designed for adults who travel by train, but it contains nothing that would be unsuitable for a younger person to see, and it could reasonably be used by a teenager travelling to school on their own.

Apple's 4+ rating is its lowest band and means the app contains no objectionable material. Rail earns it because of what it leaves out:

• No messaging or chat. Nobody can contact you through the app, and you cannot contact anyone through it. There is no way for two users to find each other.
• No social feed or shared content. Nothing you do in the app is visible to other people, and there is no content from other users to encounter. The only content is train times and platforms from the official rail data feeds.
• No advertising. The app shows no ads and includes no advertising, analytics or tracking SDKs.
• No location tracking. The app never asks for or uses your location. It knows which train you chose to track, not where you are.
• No purchases today. The app is free during its beta. If a subscription is introduced later it will use Apple's in-app purchase system, which respects Ask to Buy and Screen Time purchase restrictions.
• No web browser. The app has no built-in browser. The handful of links it contains, such as this website and the privacy policy, open in Safari.
• No mature content. No violence, profanity, horror, sexual content, alcohol, tobacco or drug references, no gambling, and no medical or health advice.

Rail uses Sign in with Apple so that notifications can reach the right phone. It creates no profile, asks for no name, age or photo, and stores an email address only if the user chooses to share one at sign-in. What is held is set out in the privacy policy.

Users choose a train service and two stations from lists. There are no free-text fields in which a young user could write anything, and nothing is shared with other people.

The app's purpose is to send notifications about the tracked train, and it will ask for permission to do so. They can be turned off at any time in iOS Settings, and Screen Time's notification limits apply to Rail as to any other app.

Rail has no content that needs restricting, so it includes no parental controls of its own and does not ask users to prove their age. Apple's Screen Time settings work as expected: with the Apps rating restriction set to 4+ or above, the app remains available.

If you have a question about the app's suitability for someone in your care, email sam@sammysergi.com. You can also read our support page and terms of use.