Sheffield & District Section
Transport resources on the Internet - a beginner's guide
Mailing lists and web sites
This is the page with all the links.... But I'm still working on it - please be patient!
Mailing lists and web sites
This is the page with all the links.... But I'm still working on it - please be patient!
Introduction
(for
those who've come here by accident)
Yes, it's another page of links, intended as a
guide for people who work in transport and are new to the Internet. But
it should also be a handy starting point for anyone who wants to find information
on transport in Britain. You may find it useful to bookmark
this page now.
Two lists will be of particular interest to transportants. The Universities Transport Studies Group list covers transport in its widest sense, though many of the posts concern urban transport. The railway-studies list, run by the Institute of Railway Studies, is of course about railways and tends to concentrate on historical issues. Both lists are primarily for academics but others with a serious professional interest can also subscribe. They are not intended to be used for lengthy debate but to post questions and to let people know about conferences, research findings and new publications. They can also be used for advertising job vacancies.
Some commercial organisations also run mailing lists or "newsletters". One such is “The Urban Mobility Professional", published by Urban Mobility Network.
If you have time on your hands and like to know what's happening on the railway right now, then try the rail-gen list - although this is a service of more interest to enthusiasts than professionals, it may alert you to incidents and delays to trains sooner than more conventional media.
In all cases, make sure you read the rules before you subscribe and before you post. Mailing lists are private, and not the anarchic "free-for-all" that you might expect on Usenet.
General Web SitesSafety is always the good transportant's first concern. If you're travelling abroad, check out the WorldWise Directory and the Foreign Office's Travel Advice pages.
Safety information for operators rather than passengers
is just starting to become more widely available. The Railway Inspectorate
is now putting some of its reports on the Web, following the lead of the Transportation
Safety Board of Canada. All their accident
reports are on the Web (in English and in French).
These are good starting points for searches: they list all sorts of sites on specific topics.
The UK Public Transportation Site
The Bus Station
- thousands of bus related links world-wide
Freightgate - "the Ultimate
Website for the Freight Industry" or so they say :-)
BusWeb - another bus site, not
yet so comprehensive as The Bus Station but possibly of more relevance
to professionals
InfoLondon - a UK transport
links directory
A new and as yet un-named site listing local
journey planner sites by town (UK only)
The Frequently
Asked Questions site for uk.transport
The Frequently Asked
Questions site for uk.railway
NMRA Directory of World
Wide Rail Sites
The University
of Westminster transport links site - "the best transport links
page I've yet found" according to a colleague of mine but slow to load
in my experience.
And these are useful reference sites, if you need to look something up quickly. For the moment, they're mostly rail-related but more will be added later.
National Railways Conditions
of Carriage
Natinal Railways
Byelaws
The Signal Box - British
railway signalling practice
Railtrack's Freight Commercial Route
Directory
The UK Public Transportation Site
Clive's London Underground
Guide (unofficial but very informative!)
Richard Griffin's London
Underground Rolling Stock site
The Railway Technical
Web Pages
German-English
dictionary of railway or technical terms
John Oxlade's German
Railway Handbook
Sunil Rodger's Railway Civil
Engineer Site
Tony Wright's Car
Fuel Prices in the UK site and the AA's European
Petrol Prices site
The UK Rail Rovers prices
and validity guide
Freightmaster: "the
complete guide to British railfreight operations"
Not forgetting my own contributions to the Web:
Transport Research & Information Network's Forthcoming
Conferences page
Sheffield
Bus Museum
Sandtoft
Transport Centre - Home of the Trolleybus!
Railtrack's
journey planner
German Rail's
journey planner (world wide)
South Yorkshire
PTE's journey planner (train, tram and bus)
Virgin's Trainline for journey and fare information, plus on-line booking
GNER's current running information
North Western Trains' current
running information
The Rail
Travel list of all sites showing current running information
Manchester International Airport - not interactive but a full list of scheduled flights
The JourneyPlan site for downloading a current timetable database
The "Electric Soup"
site - hints on
"best
practice" for public transport web sites
There are millions of these. I'll start with just a few and add more later....
Sema Group's UK Railway Industry site
Railtrack
Great North Eastern Railway
Channel Tunnel Rail Link
English Welsh & Scottish
Railway (EWS)
Department of the Environment, Transport
and the Regions
Rail
Freight Grants Guide
Railtrack Freight Commercial
International Union of Railways (UIC)
Central Railway
Eurotunnel
Manchester International Airport
Walter Alexander (bus construction)
Sinclair Knight Merz (transport
consultants)
GrantRail (rail
track design, construction and maintenance)
Peak Rail (Matlock
to Darley Dale and hopefully on to Buxton)
If you need some light relief, check out this site about a mythical Train Operating Company which was invented by the regular subscribers on uk.railway:
Media and Political sitesElectronic versions of newspapers:
The Times
Daily
Telegraph
Yorkshire Post
Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions
The DETR's Local and Regional Government page
The Tagish Directory of UK Local Government on the Web
The Central Office
of Information (with a list of links to UK central government bodies)
Urgente Online is a daily free digital newspaper about logistics and transport in sometimes fractured English (it is published from Spain). It also offers a search engine for links to transport sites.
COPAC
provides free access to the unified online catalogues of some of the largest
university research libraries in the UK and Ireland. It offers a single
point of access to details of materials held in many
different locations. To access COPAC you can
use the Web Interface at: http://copac.ac.uk/copac/ or the Text Interface
using telnet: telnet copac.ac.uk. Username and password are both: copac
For further information or assistance contact the COPAC Helpdesk by e-mail <copac@mcc.ac.uk> or by telephone: 0161 275 6037.
Serious in depth research can also be helped by
using commercially run databases like Emerald which can be accessed via
the Internet. There are hefty charges for using these but they're very
useful for academics and marketing departments. When I get a round tuit
I will add some details.
The best starting point for public transport professionals is probably Iain Logan's Transport Information on the Web site. And BusWeb have established an Internet Tips and Tools index of websites that can be helpful with constructing, optimising and promoting your website.
Other good sites that I have found useful are
the excellent if intriguingly named Guru
of the Marshes and, for checking that your pages actually work
properly in different browsers, Bobby.
Then there's the Web Site Garage
which will "tune up your web site" and help you submit it to a variety
of different search engines. Check out Jakob
Nielsen's Alertbox regularly for sound, practical advice on making
your site user-friendly. Finally, think about copyright issues if you've
"borrowed" text or graphics from other sources: the last
page of this Beginners' Guide will give you some idea of what's permitted
and what's not.
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