What we do not do
There are no accounts, so there is nothing to sign up to. We run no advertising network. We do not set cookies. We do not sell or share data about you, and we do not build a profile of you: nothing described below is joined up into a picture of a person.
Visitor analytics
We count page views using Plausible, which we host ourselves rather than using a third-party service. It is cookieless and collects no personal data: what we see is aggregate numbers, such as how many people opened the live map yesterday, not who they were. Nothing is shared with anyone else and nothing follows you to other sites.
Things kept in your browser
The map remembers a few of your own settings so it can put them back next time: the size of the train markers, whether the train card is minimised, the radius for passing trains, and whether the key is open. These live in your browser's local storage on your own device. They are never sent to us, they identify nothing, and clearing your browser data removes them.
Your location
The map can centre on where you are and list your nearest stations. That only happens when you press the locate button, and your browser will ask your permission first. The position is used in the page, on your device, to work out which stations are closest. It is never sent to us and never stored.
Sharing a location, if you choose to
The passing-trains panel has a share button, which makes a link that carries an approximate position so whoever you send it to sees the same trains. Three things about it:
- It only ever happens because you chose it. Pressing the button does not share anything: it opens a warning first, explaining what the link reveals, and you have to confirm before anything is created.
- The position is rounded to about half a mile, which is the smallest area the panel works in anyway. The link says roughly where you are, not exactly.
- We still never see it. The link is made in your browser and goes wherever you send it. It does not pass through us, and nothing about it reaches this site.
A link keeps working after you have moved on, so treat it like any other message: send it to people you trust.
Map tiles
The background map is drawn from tiles served by OpenStreetMap and OpenFreeMap, and the label fonts come from OpenMapTiles. Your browser fetches those directly, so those services see your IP address as part of sending the images back, the same as any website you visit.
Server logs
The site is served from Amazon Web Services, and the delivery network keeps an access log of the requests it handles. Each line records your IP address, the time, the page or file requested, the response, the page you came from, and the browser and operating system you are using. An IP address can count as personal data, which is why this section exists.
We keep those logs to find faults, to see whether the site is up, and to deal with abuse such as someone hammering the servers. They are not used for analytics, they are not joined to anything else, and they are not shared.
The logs are deleted automatically after 90 days, by a rule on the storage itself rather than by anyone remembering to do it.
Links to other sites
Where we link out, you are on someone else's site once you follow the link, under their privacy policy rather than ours.
Some links to ticket retailers are partner links, which means they carry a referral code. If you buy a ticket after following one, the retailer may pay us a small commission at no extra cost to you, and their network may set a cookie on their own site to record that the visit came from here. That happens after you have left this site. We receive no personal information about you as a result, only whether a booking happened. Prices shown on this site come from National Rail's published fares data and are not affected by it.
Getting in touch
Train Map UK is run by Optional Ltd. If you want to know what we hold about you, the answer is nothing, but you are welcome to ask, and to ask anything else about this page, via the contact page.
Changes
If this page changes in a way that matters, the change will appear in what's new along with everything else.