A live view of the road ahead
Rail Buddy tracks where your train actually is along the road and shows you what is coming — the gradient, the curve, the km post, the crossing, and the landmarks your own crews have marked. Built by and for the people who drive the iron.
What Rail Buddy is
Route knowledge is the hardest thing to hold and the easiest thing to lose — on an unfamiliar road, after a long break, at night, in weather. Rail Buddy is a second set of eyes on the road ahead: it knows where you are along the line, not just where you are on a map, and it tells you what is in front of you before you get there.
Positioned along the road
Your GPS fix is snapped onto the line and turned into chainage, so the app talks in km posts and distance-to-go rather than in latitude and longitude.
Gradients and curves
The elevation profile of what is coming, so you can see the grade you are about to take rather than feel it arrive.
Landmarks your crews built
Drop a pin for anything that matters — a crossing, a bad spot, a signal, a marker — and it is there next trip, for you or for everyone.
Why we built it
A driver who has run a road a thousand times knows where the grade bites, where the sighting is poor, which crossing has the awkward approach and how far it really is to the next marker. None of that is written down anywhere useful, so it stays informal — passed on in the cab, if there is time — and a driver on an unfamiliar road starts from much less than the person beside them had. Rail Buddy makes the road legible, captures what crews know, and keeps the driver's eyes where they belong.
- The signal is the authority. Always. Rail Buddy is an aid. It does not authorise movement, does not replace route knowledge, and must never be treated as a source of safeworking instruction.
- Eyes out, not down. Every design decision is measured against whether it pulls attention into the cab. If a feature needs studying, it does not belong.
- Offline is the normal case. Rail corridors lose signal constantly. The app assumes that rather than treating it as an error.
- Crews own what they capture. Your pins are yours by default. Sharing is a decision, not a default.
In the cab
Live position on the line
Your GPS fix is projected onto the rail geometry and converted to chainage, so position is expressed as distance along the road rather than as a dot on a map.
Front and rear tracking
Give it your consist length and direction and it tracks both ends of the train — the number that matters when you are clearing a section or a crossing.
Elevation ahead
The gradient profile of the road in front of you, sampled from real elevation data, so the grade is something you see coming.
Km posts & datums
Distance markers and datums along the line, with the nearest km post resolved for any landmark so the app speaks the same language as the road.
Speed profile
The speed history of the road you are on, built from accumulated telemetry rather than from a static table.
Installs as an app
The driver view adds to your home screen and opens full screen, dark by default, with its shell cached for a cold start in a dead zone.
Capture, in seconds, from the cab
- Quick pins. Mark a spot with one action — it snaps to the line and records its chainage automatically.
- Segments, not just points. Mark a stretch of road, not only a location, for things that have length: a speed restriction, a bad section, a work site.
- Offline-first. Captures queue on the device and sync when coverage returns, de-duplicated so a retry never doubles up.
- Yours by default. Personal pins stay on your own layer unless they are deliberately published to a shared one.
The planner
Layered network map
The whole rail network with toggleable layers — your pins, shared sets, stations, signals, crossings and more.
Lines and junctions
The imported geometry, merged into long lines with junction connectivity and the chainage model that lets a GPS fix become a position along the road.
Asset layers
Stations, signals, level crossings, bridges, tunnels and kilometre posts, imported from public operator and mapping data and placed against the rail.
Common questions
Is Rail Buddy a safeworking system?
No, and it must never be used as one. Rail Buddy is a situational-awareness aid. It does not authorise movements, does not replace signals, train control or your route knowledge, and is not a source of safeworking instruction. Always follow your operator's rules and the signals in front of you.
Does it work without mobile coverage?
Yes, for the parts that matter. The driver view installs to the device and holds its shell and loaded road data; captures queue locally and sync when coverage returns.
Who can see my position and my pins?
Pins you create are on your personal layer unless deliberately published to a shared one. Your live position is used on your device to place you along the road; only anonymised speed samples reach the server, to build the speed profile.
Is it available now?
Rail Buddy is in testing with a limited group of crews while the road data and tools are refined. Access is by account only, and there is no public or trial version.
Rail Buddy is in testing
We are working with a small number of crews while the road data and the tools are refined. Access is by account only.
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