The Official National Train Map Sucked, So I Made My Own
Details
- External ID
- 46344270
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- The Official National Train Map Sucked, So I Made My Own
- Website domain
- bdzmap.com
- Launched
- Dec. 21, 2025
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 77
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.8625954198473282
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
Hi HN,I’m a junior developer. I wanted to share a side project I’ve been working on.The national railway carrier (BDZ) has no public API. They have an official map but the UI is quite dated, often lags, and doesn't show the full route context.I wrote a short write-up about the process here: https://www.pavlinbg.com/posts/bg-train-trackerI know it's still rough around the edges (I'm still working on it), but I’d love to hear your feedback or suggestions!
Enrichment
- Theme
- space and geospatial visualization tools
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Content generation
- Audience
- B2C
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- custom train map for visualization
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Yes The project scrapes railway website endpoints to track transit schedules and delays, rendering them on a standard interactive map UI like Leaflet or Mapbox.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Hungarian train info website (kozlekedesiklub.hu/vonatinfo), Dutch spoorkaart map (spoorkaart.mwnn.nl), Amtraker.com, OpenRailwayMap, Official transit apps
Concerns raised: Arrival/departure times display in hundreds of minutes instead of hours:minutes format, Train icon easily mistaken for bus icon, Tooltip covers up highlighted route, Lines around forms too faint for peripheral vision, Data may be hidden by authorities if showing poor service
Feature requests: Add zoom +/- buttons for accessibility and desktop usability, Fix train detail panel on desktop - make floating or sidebar instead of fixed bottom, Auto-detect OS language and theme settings without prompts, Search box as primary element at top of interface, Train dashboard at top next to settings icon
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 52 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #9 of 53 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 30 days after the earliest competitor.
- Tokyo Trains · hn · 2026-08-11 · 13 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- Offline-first UK train planner · hn · 2026-03-24 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- Planes.fyi · hn · 2025-12-17 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- OVspot · ph · 2026-09-26 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- Open source navigation project for GPS and Internet denied regions · hn · 2026-06-19 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- I built a real-time OSINT dashboard pulling 15 live global feeds · hn · 2026-03-08 · 312 upvotes · similarity 0.40
- Is Hormuz open yet? · hn · 2026-04-08 · 484 upvotes · similarity 0.39
- Follow London Trains in 3D · hn · 2026-07-04 · 156 upvotes · similarity 0.39
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a content generation tool for Government yet.