Tracking Train Rides With Viaduct

It is no secret that I enjoy tracking things, whether it is books I read, things I watched, or places I have been. When I travel, I track my flights, and that is, as far as I know, something a lot of people do. It also means that there are many tools out there for it. But when it comes to trains, I have never found a very reliable solution… until now!

I have recently discovered viaduct, a web app where I can track my train trips. And the best part is: it integrates with the train schedules of some countries. I’m not exactly sure which, but all countries in Europe I tried to add, I had a schedule for.

I spent some hours the past week importing a lot of data - around 350 trips - into viaduct. Sadly, there was no way to automatically import all of them, and not all of the data I had was extremely structured. So the truth is that some trains might not have the exact right hours of departure and such, but yeah, it was the best I could do.

Another nicety of viaduct is the statistics: the statistics come in many ways and forms. And what’s nice about statistics is plucking a few interesting facts out of it:

  • I have visited at least 110 stations across 12 countries so far: Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Austria, Japan, France, Spain, Czechia and United Kingdom.
  • I have traveled with around 28 different operators, being NS - the Dutch Railways - the one I traveled with the most, followed by CP, the Portuguese Rail services.
  • I have traveled at least 40.000 km by rail. I say at least because I could not include any travels from 2023 since I lacked the data. That was a mistake from my part from not having stored it.
  • I have ridden 45% of the railway network in the Netherlands. That is crazy. Ad second place there’s Portugal with 28% coverage.
My Coverage of the Dutch Rail Network
My Coverage of the Dutch Rail Network

It’s very nice to see. My plan is, from now on, to just track my train rides as I take them. Considering I live in the Netherlands, and how reliable viaduct has been with the schedules, it’s quite effortless. And maybe I should make it a goal to cover 100% of the Dutch railway network. I have a subscription for free train rides on the weekend, so… why not? Discover a bit more of the Netherlands.

With all of this data, I am now also able to better generate my trips page with better, and more reliable information. When you click on one of the trips, you see the flights, busses and trains I took. Now, it has been augmented to include everything coming out the exports of viaduct, and Flighty - the app I use to track my flights.

Just to say… I do recommend viaduct if you like to track things!