How to play RailPass
RailPass is a free daily puzzle played on the real European rail network: you wake up at a station somewhere in Europe, read genuine departure boards, and change trains until you reach the day's destination before the deadline.
- Read the board. Every departure is a real service with real times and calling points. Click one to see everywhere it stops.
- Board, and get off wherever you like. You are not buying a ticket to the end of the line. Any stop on the train is a place you can alight, and the map redraws around wherever you land.
- Watch the clock, not your wallet. Time is the only budget. Waiting three hours for a faster train is a real decision, and the last train of the night is a real deadline.
- Work the day's three challenges. Each day sets three, drawn from a pool: ride a night train, use three operators, stop at five stations. They are worth more than speed, and they are what push you off the obvious route.
- Cross town where you can. In a handful of cities the big stations are linked by a walk or a metro rather than a train. Those appear at the top of the board with their real duration, and crossing town is not a train.
- Arrive before the deadline. Every day has been proven solvable, so a route always exists. Finding a better one than the solver did is the game.
What is RailPass?
RailPass is a journey puzzle built on published operator timetables from more than thirty national rail feeds, covering around 28,000 stations from Penzance to Bucharest and from Sicily to the Arctic Circle. Nothing is invented. The departure boards are the ones the operators publish, the night trains are the ones that actually run, and the lines on the map follow surveyed track from OpenStreetMap rather than straight lines drawn between dots.
Each day starts you somewhere with character rather than somewhere convenient: an end-of-the-line terminus, a mountain halt, a seaside station, a border town where the departure board leaves the country. The destination is a city you would be pleased to arrive in. Getting between the two is the puzzle, and because the network is real, the constraints are real too. Branch lines have four trains a day. Sleepers cover ground while you would otherwise be waiting. Miss the last connection and you are stranded exactly as you would be in life.
Every journey is proven before it is published. A solver searches the real timetable for a route that reaches the destination inside the deadline while satisfying all three challenges, and the day is only released once it has found one. Days that a single direct train would solve are thrown out. That guarantee is why the deadline can be tight: it is set against a route that is known to exist.
Where the data comes from
Timetables come from national open-data feeds published by the operators and infrastructure managers themselves, converted into a single canonical Tuesday so that everyone plays the same network. Great Britain has no public rail GTFS at all, so British services are built from Network Rail's schedule feed joined to the Department for Transport's NaPTAN station register.
Track geometry is routed over OpenStreetMap railway ways, so the line between two stations follows the curve the railway actually takes. Buses and rail-replacement coaches are filtered out, which is harder than it sounds: some operators publish road services under rail codes.
Scoring
A hundred points: sixty for the three challenges, twenty-five for time and fifteen for obscurity. Time is scored against the proven route rather than a guess, so matching it earns full marks and beating it is possible. Obscurity rewards routing through quiet stations, which is deliberately at odds with speed - the fastest journey is rarely the most interesting one, and the scoring is built so that you have to choose.
Frequently asked questions
Is RailPass free?
Yes. RailPass is free to play in your browser with no account and no download. One new journey goes live every day, and every past day stays playable in the archive.
Is the timetable real?
Yes. Every departure comes from published operator timetables, gathered from more than thirty national rail feeds covering around 28,000 stations. The times, the operators, the calling points and the night trains are the real ones, played on a canonical Tuesday.
Is every day actually possible?
Yes, and that is checked before the day is published. A journey is only released once a solver has found a real route that reaches the destination inside the deadline while satisfying all three challenges. Days solvable in one or two trains are rejected as too easy.
What happens if I miss the last train?
The same thing that happens in life: you are stranded. The clock is the only budget in the game, so a connection you cannot make is a route you cannot take, and the day ends when the deadline passes.
Can I walk between stations in a city?
In a few cities, yes. Where two big stations are linked in reality by a walk, a metro or an RER rather than by a train, that link appears at the top of the departure board with its real duration. London Kings Cross to St Pancras is five minutes on foot; Gare du Nord to Montparnasse is twenty-five on the Metro. Crossing town is not a train, so it never counts toward the train or operator challenges.
Do night trains help?
Often, yes. A sleeper covers ground while the clock runs anyway, so an overnight leg can turn an impossible distance into a comfortable one. On longer journeys the proven route usually includes one.
How is the score calculated?
Sixty points for the three challenges, twenty-five for time and fifteen for obscurity. Time is measured against the route the solver proved rather than a guess, so matching it scores full marks and beating it is possible. Obscurity rewards routing through quiet stations instead of the obvious main line.