Video of Maps app in "follow mode" running on an iPhone 3GS while on a moving train. Using ios5

This is a quick simple video showing what the Maps app on an iPhone 3GS looks like in "follow mode" when you are on a moving train. I find it interesting how accurate it follows the railway tracks.
You can see the shadow cast by bridges in the home button on the right, as you can see it coincides with the bridges on the map.

We take this technology for granted, imagine going back to the 1980's and telling someone what you can do these days they would not believe you could have such power.


If you own a smartphone and use the built-in mapping application then you will probably be aware of what it can do. On my iPhone 3GS (still on ios5) the "Maps" application allows you to see Satellite imagery for your location by simply tapping once on the arrow button (bottom left of the Map screen) it will go into "locate" mode. Your current position on the Earth is marked by that blue dot with the white circle around it.
When you do this it uses the built-in GPS to find you and show the map.

If you tap the arrow again it goes into "Follow mode", this means it will move the map arround as you move around and keep it centered.

If I had not done this video in follow mode then the blue dot would have moved down to the bottom left and gone off screen.

If you tap the arrow for a third time then it puts it into "compass mode", this is the same as follow mode but now also orientates the map so the roads are exactly as you see them now. (assuming you are holding the phone the correct way around!).

As you probably know one of the biggest features that iOS 6 removed was the Google Maps App. This is the one reason I have not bothered to update my iPhone from ios v5.1.1

If your trying to work out where the train journey is, its near Stockport in Manchester, UK. The phone is running on ios 5.1.1, The network provider is o2 PAYG using their ALL ROUNDER WEB bolt On.

The blank squares at 2:24 are because it has not managed to download the data for those sections in time so they appear blank and then fill in as they move.

If you have updated to ios6 and miss the Google Maps app then you can now download it as a free app !
Google Maps App for iPhone ios6.

Its almost the same as the ios5 maps app but you have to get a google account and sign in if you want to save addressed etc.

Hope you found this of interest.

Thanks
Andy

Video of a Winter train journey through Hope,Edale,Hathersage and Grindleford in Dec 2012. Stunning scenery!

If you have never been on a train between Derby and Manchester Piccadilly then you are in for a real treat. The Section between Sheffield and Manchester Piccadilly passes through some of the most stunning scenery I have seen on a train. After the train has gone through Totley Tunnel is goes through Hope, Edale, Hathersage and Grindleford.In my video you can see that the countryside is covered with a heavy hoar frost.

Here is my video of a Winter train journey through Hope, Edale, Hathersage and Grindleford in Dec 2012. Stunning scenery! :

Or click this link : Video of Winter train journey through Hope,Edale,Hathersage and Grindleford.

If you fancy going on the train from Derby to Manchester Piccadilly say for the Manchester Christmas Market then it only costs £34.20 (open return) per person. At Manchester Piccadilly just get on the free Manchester metroshuttle (Orange Bus No1) and get off on John Dalton Street.


Hope you enjoyed it.
Andy

Useful free apps for Train Passengers on iPhone. Know the Platform, live information etc

If you are an occasional user of the railway network in the UK then I have a couple of handy free apps for the iPhone that I often use, that you may find of use.

Sheffield Railway Station.

I use these apps so I know where and when trains are arriving and where they are going to. You can of course do a lot more with these apps such as buy tickets.
These are great if you have arrived at a train station, bought your ticket and want to know quickly what time and platform your next train is due without scanning the departures boards.

The apps are :
The trainline.com
Crosscountry Train Tickets.
These free apps are available for iPhone and Android.

In my examples below we are going to look at trains between Derby and Sheffield.
thetrainline app
Once installed click thetrainline icon. Click on edit and tap "Press to change home station". Lets say we are going to Sheffield. Select Sheffield and it will return you to the main screen.
Now simply tap "Next train home" and it will show you the next 5 trains that will take you to Sheffield from Derby station. It will show you the departure time, arrival time, Duration and if you have to change.

Tainline app showing next trains to Sheffield

Train Tickets app

Once installed click Train Tickets icon. Click on Live Train Times icon, Tap Departures and select Derby and tap the "View Trains" button. This will show you the next 18 trains that are going to depart from Derby station. It even tells you if the train is on time or how many minutes late it is and also what platform its going to leave from!
If you tap one of the trains then it will show you a graphical map of the position of the train for its entire journey. So you can see where the train journey started from and where its going to end.

Traintickets app showing live departure times from Derby.

Traintickets app showing graphic map position of train

Tainline app showing next trains to Derby

Here we can see that the 15:54 train from Sheffield is going all the way to Penzance :

Here we see that the 15:54 train to Derby from Sheffield is 1 minute late :

The trainline app is very handy for quick checking of train journey durations as you can never assume that things stay the same. For example normally it takes around 32 minutes to get from Derby to Sheffield but checking this now (June 8th 2012) I can see its anything from 53 minutes to 1 hour 33 minutes !!!!!
I'm guessing there are some sort of engineering works causing this massive delay? You could get to London is the same time !

Hope someone finds these free apps of use.
Andy

Bombardier Derby featured in "The Tube" Episode 2 on BBC2, Makes you proud to be from Derby!

A new documentary series started last week following the life of the London Underground system. If you missed it don't worry as its available on the BBC iPlayer. Its a very entertaining program and well worth watching even if you have never used the Tube you will find it of interest.

In the second episode last night there was a large part of the program on about the new fleet of trains that they are slowly introducing to replace the old stock that was manufactured in the 1960s.
All of these new trains are made here at Bombardier Derby !

Bombardier Derby on Litchurch Lane as seen in this programme.

The narrator says...

"One hundred and fifty miles north of London, the replacement fleet is beginning to take shape. Staff at Bombardier Transportation in Derby are building one hundred and ninety one state of the art Tube trains".
They then go on to talk to people at the factory who explain what goes into making this new fleet. We hear from Kevin Thomas, Christopher Cope and Steve Jenkinson.

These are the first ever underground trains to have air conditioning and open ended carriages !

If you have ever visited London the you will know that the underground is a necessary evil that you have to use, using it as a tourist is not the same as if you have to use it for your daily commute to work so air conditioning is going to be so good for Londoners !

"The Tube" is a program going behind the scenes of the world's oldest, largest and busiest underground train network as it undergoes the biggest overhaul in its history.

Every day, 60,000 journeys are made and not paid for, costing London Underground £20 million a year in unpaid fares. The programme follows Diane McConnell and Denese Brunker, two of the Tube's longest-serving ticket inspectors, and other plain-clothes revenue inspectors as they pursue fare evaders across the network. Find what happens to the evaders and how the money from tickets is spent.

This particular episode was broadcast on BBC Two, 9:00PM Mon, 27 Feb 2012.

You can watch the full one hour episode for free on iPlayer here :
The Tube Episode 2. or in amazing HD if you have fast broadband : HD version.

If you just want to skip to the Bombardier bit then click HERE.

You have until 10:59PM Mon, 2 Apr 2012 to watch this so you have a bit of time still.

Some screen grabs from "The Tube" Episode 2 :

If you missed it you can watch it now using the link I have provided above.
And of course there are my Bombardier march videos from July 2011 here.

Hope you found this of interest.

Thanks
Andy

Videos of the Bombardier march in Derby, Trying to save the UK's last train builder.

I have now completed uploading all of my video footage I took at the Bombardier March that took place in Derby on Saturday 23rd July 2011. Including the speeches Bob Crow, Margaret Beckett etc.

Bombardier March in Derby - Part 1
In this video I have captured every single person that was part of the march near the start on Station Approach. It takes over 16 minutes for it to pass by.
If you were in the march at the start then you will be in this video !



Bombardier March in Derby - Part 2
In this video I have joined the march and this video starts at The Morledge near Derby Bus Station, I follow it on its way through the Corn Market and up Full Street to Derby Cathedral Green.


Bombardier March in Derby - Part 3
In this video I have captured the speeches at Cathedral Green.


Bombardier March in Derby - Part 4
In this video I have captured the speeches at Cathedral Green by Bob Crow.


Thanks
Andy

Visit Sheffield by train from Derby using a Derbyshire Wayfarer to save lots of money.

Sheffield is a city just 35 minutes away from Derby by Train.

Sheffield currently has a big wheel located on Fargate, seeing as Derby are not having one this year why not have a ride on their wheel. The Wheel of Sheffield costs £6.50 for Adults/£4.50 for Children and the 60m high ride lasts for about 13 minutes. You can book it online using the web address above.

There is a special train ticket that you can get that I've not heard of before but the savings you can make
are pretty good.
Normally two return train tickets Derby to Sheffield would cost £34.80 (or £26 if you manage to catch one of the few cheaper journeys available)
But if you ask for a Derbyshire Wayfarer all day travel ticket then it will only cost you £15.10 !.
Not only that but for £15.10 you can actually take three children as well.
Not only that but you can use the Derbyshire Wayfarer on all buses in Derbyshire.
Not only that but you can also make unlimited journeys all day on both train and bus.
As you can see the Derbyshire Wayfarer is outstanding value and well worth it.
For a single person the Derbyshire Wayfarer ticket costs £8.90 (includes one child) so even that's cheaper
than buying a normal return train ticket. (Derby to Sheffield=£8.70 + Sheffield to Derby=£8.70 Total=£17.40). You save £8.50

It consists of a single normal train ticket that is stuck onto a blue "Derbyshire Wayfarer" card, you only get one ticket regardless of how many are travelling on it, its just the price paid that indicates how many it covers. Of course you cant put the ticket through the automatic ticket barrier at Derby Railway Station because of the card its stuck on so you simply show the ticket to the guard and they let you though.

In the month of August there is a free daily tour of the town hall which takes place at 2pm each day. Just
meet in the reception of the hall to go on the tour. The tour lasts about an hour and is very interesting if
you are into history.
Sheffield Town Hall was officially opened on 21st May, 1897 by Queen Victoria, you can see a photograph of the opening day in a display case in the reception of the Town Hall, during the tour they will tell you about the key she turned to open the doors.
There are plenty of places to visit such as the Crucible Theatre, The Winter Gardens, Sheffield Museum.

At some point in the next week or so I will be posting a video of Sheffield that I took of some of the sights
and a tour of the Town Hall.

If you have not been to Sheffield before or have not visited for a few years then why not take a trip there.
 
Thanks
Andy

On top of Friar Gate Bridge, My Forgotten Places entry on the World Wide Panorama.

The current themed event has just closed on the World Wide Panorama website and the theme for this event was "Forgotten Places" so I created a 360x180 degree VR photograph looking over the top of Friar Gate Bridge in Derby. I had to go to great lengths to take this photograph as the wall is about 5 foot high and my triod is 2 foot high, I had to use an delayed infrared remote control to take the shots while trying to duck out of the way of the lens!

Here is my entry for "Forgotten Places" : This is an interactive photograph allowing you to look in all directions using the mouse.



Here is a photograph for camparison taken in 1958 from about the same place on the bridge  :

This excellent photograph is from a rare book that I have called Friargate Line: Derby and the Great Northern Railway by Mark Higginson
The photograph was taken on the 9th August 1958.
If you have a fast broadband connection and fast PC then try my high resolution fullscreen version of this 360 dgree photograph here :

Forgotten Places VR Photograph: On top of Friar Gate bridge.

People from all over the World have taken part in this event, you can see all the entries on here :
WWP Forgotten Places

Thanks
Andy

How to get the cheapest first class train tickets from Derby to London.

Please watch in HD and fullscreen for best clarity.

The train ticketing system in the UK is extremely complicated to understand.
Here in this tutorial I will demonstrate how easy it can be to track down the cheapest prices for your journey from Derby to London in First Class. You can use this method for any train journey of course and you don’t have to travel First Class.

You may be asking yourself why not just do the whole thing on the Trainline website, well the simple reason is they charge a £1 booking fee, plus an extra £3.50 for credit card payments and also a charge to have the tickets posted to you. So for this reason I think its best to use their site as a tool and then go and book the tickets in person. This avoids all those extra charges and you get the tickets in your hand rather than them getting held up by the postal strikes.

Why go First Class?
Once you have tried first class you won’t want to go Standard Class again, on a longer journey such as Derby to London (1 Hour 31 Min or more) it makes the journey a lot more relaxing. Travelling by first class often costs only an extra £5, or sometimes such as in my example video only £1 extra.

So what do you get in First Class on East Midland Trains?
1) Extra roomy seats to work or relax
2) Free newspapers
3) Free cups of tea/Coffee (served in a proper cup)
4) Free bottled water
5) Free snack cake
6) Mains socket for a laptop or mobile phone charging.
7) First Class menu with waitress service to your seat. (Food is not free)
8) Better clientele, so no noisy children kicking the back of your seat!
9) Reserved seats

Its worth pointing out that if you travel on a weekend or bank holiday then you do not get items 2 to 5 above which is why I have recommended weekday travel to get the most out the first class experience.
You never know who you may see in First Class, last time we went first class Jimmy Carr was in the same carrage!

Useful Notes
At weekend or bank holidays there are sometimes engineering works and other disruptions from time to time so its worth checking before you commit to buying tickets. East Midlands Trains have a dedicated page which lists any alterations to train services, usually for planned engineering works:
http://www.eastmidlandstrains.co.uk/EMTrains/Tickets/Alterations.htm

Be flexible
In order to achieve the lowest possible prices for your journey you need to be flexible in your travel times. For example if you go into this with set times in your mind of when you want to travel then you will pay a lot more.
Using the dates in my tutorial if you were to decide that you want the following travel times 27th November leaving Derby at 07.05 arriving in London at 8.57 First class ticket is £115 and 1st December leaving London at 18.55 arriving in Derby at 20.46 First class ticket is £62
So thats a total of £177 return, This goes to prove that you need to be willing to adjust your travel times about to maximise the savings.

Book well ahead
Contractually Network Rail must have the timetable set 12 weeks in advance,
Booking as early as possible gives you the best chance of being able to buy the
cheapest ticket for the journey you want to make. I have found in practice that you can still get real cheap tickets even just a few weeks before you want to travel as in this tutorial example.

Reserved Seats
When you get onto the 1st class coach and look for your seats you will notice a scrolling green message above your seats saying "Reserved Derby to London".
When you book your tickets you can choose if you want to be facing in the direction of travel and if you want a table with 4 seats or two.

Save more money by using the 2 for 1 London tickets.
There is a great website that you can use that allows you 2FOR1 entry to over 100 top London attractions, restaurants, theatres, exhibitions and more, when you travel by train to London:
http://www.daysoutguide.co.uk/attraction-types/2for1london.aspx
In August barriers were installed at both Derby and St Pancras. When you get to St Pancras you put the ticket in the barrier and it will take the ticket from you so you will need to keep your inward bound tickets as proof when you use the 2 for 1 system.

St Pancras London
St Pancras station is where your journey will end, from here you can get on an underground train to anywhere or even the Eurostar to Paris.


Music Credits :
Fountains of Life by Champius
http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/220400
Licensed under Creative Commons

The Photograph of East Midland Trains at start is by Stephen Craven and licensed under Creative Commons.
http://www.geograph.org.uk/profile/6597

The small timelapse video journey along London Road/Midland Road to the Railway station was filmed on 8th November 2009 at 14.57

Another reason for making this tutorial was so I could learn how to get to grips with Camtasia studio to capture my actions on screen. I will be making tutorials soon on how to make any sound into an iPhone ringtone and some Sony Vegas 9 stuff too.

If you found my tutorial on how to get the cheapest first class train tickets of use then please rate and comment. Do you have any handy tips?

Thanks
Andy