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How Rail Six works

A quick tour of the live countdown, direction toggle, saved commutes, and the rest of the interface. Tap any item below to jump to that section.

What is Rail Six?

Rail Six is a free real-time GO Transit tracker for the GTHA. Save the trip you take most days and the home page becomes a live countdown to your next train or bus, including platform and service alerts. There is no account and no ads — your saved commute lives in your browser.

Reading the countdown

The hero clock shows time-until-departure for the next trip in the active direction. The big number is your departure clock — when it hits zero, the train or bus is scheduled to leave your origin.

The small status pill below the clock tells you what the train is doing right now:

  • WAIT — service is upcoming. The platform isn't assigned yet, or boarding hasn't opened.
  • BOARDING — doors are open at your station. The platform number is displayed.
  • ON TIME — the trip is running on its scheduled time.
  • DELAYED +Nm — Metrolinx is reporting an N-minute delay. The countdown adjusts automatically.
  • DEPARTED — the train left your origin. The next service in the list becomes the new headline.
  • CANCELLED — the trip is off. The next available departure is shown underneath.

Below the hero, the next three departures show as smaller cards so you can plan around the one after the next.

Direction toggle

A two-position pill at the top of the saved-commute view switches between To Work (your morning trip) and To Home (the return). The URL changes to ?dir=toWork or ?dir=toHome so you can bookmark each direction separately.

On a route page that you didn't save (no commute pinned), tapping the inactive direction takes you to commute setup so you can save the return trip.

Saving and changing your commute

From the home page, the four-step wizard asks for your usual service (train or bus), your start, your destination, and confirms the return. After saving, the home page redirects straight to your live commute board.

To change a saved commute, tap the gear icon on the live board. Settings opens with your current saved trip pre-filled, or — if you opened it from a route you haven't saved — with that route pre-filled so you can save it with one tap.

Your commute is stored in this browser (localStorage and a cookie). It does not sync across devices and does not leave your machine.

Picking platforms

Platform numbers come from Metrolinx and are usually published 10–20 minutes before departure at Union Station, and closer to departure at outlying stations. While the platform is unannounced, the hero shows PLATFORM PENDING next to the status pill. Once announced, it switches to the platform number — for example 7&8 at Union — and the pill turns into the boarding indicator.

GO buses use bays instead of platforms. The same rules apply, with the bay number replacing the platform.

Service alerts

An amber pill appears on your live board whenever there's an alert affecting your saved lines. Tap it to open the full alerts page filtered to your commute. The Alerts tab in the bottom nav shows a dot when there's something relevant and links to the unfiltered list when there isn't.

Alerts come straight from the GO Transit real-time feed and refresh every 30 seconds. If you've seen a planned-construction notice on gotransit.com that isn't here, that's because it's not in the public real-time feed — for planned work, always confirm on GO Transit's site.

Theme and board style

The desktop sidebar has two style toggles:

  • Theme: Dark / Light. Dark is the default — easier on the eyes in transit-board lighting. Light reads better on bright outdoor screens.
  • Board style: Modern / Flip. Modern is a clean digital list. Flip reproduces the airport-style split-flap board with animated flaps for a transit-hall feel.

Both choices persist via cookies so the first paint already matches your preference.

Use nearest station

On the wizard's home-station step (and in Settings), there's a Use nearest station pill above the search field. Tap it and Rail Six asks your browser for your location, then picks the closest GO station for you. Geolocation is requested only on tap; we don't ask for your location otherwise.

Just checking a trip?

You don't have to save a commute to look up a route. The Popular commutes board on the home page links straight to live boards for the most-checked pairs, and the Departures tab shows a station's full live board for any stop.

Each route page is a real URL — for example /routes/oakville-to-union — so you can bookmark or share specific trips without saving them as your commute.