Arrive Awake
The alarm that follows your train, delays included.A fixed alarm fails on a night train: you set it for 06:00 because arrival is 06:30, and then the train runs two hours late. Arrive Awake wakes you, or simply tells you to pack up if you are working, a chosen number of minutes before the real, delay-adjusted arrival. It is a free web app for your phone, in English and German, with nothing to install beyond "Add to Home Screen".
How a trip works
Any station in Europe. You immediately see how good the live data for that country is.
Arrivals around your planned time. Night trains are marked, coupled train portions are grouped, a green badge shows live data.
"Wake me 20 minutes before arrival." Arm it, dim the screen, go to sleep. The alarm time moves with the train.
How it decides when to ring
- Live operator data first. The expected arrival at your stop comes from the operator's realtime feed where one is open. Sources, in order of trust for each country: the operator or infrastructure manager through the backend (ÖBB Scotty for Austria, the RFI arrival boards for Italy, MÁV for Hungary), then Transitous, an open routing service that aggregates the open GTFS-RT feeds of Europe.
- GPS as the fallback. Where no live data exists, or when live data looks stale, the phone's position is projected onto the route and the timetable is interpolated: if you are where the train should have been 40 minutes ago, the arrival is 40 minutes late. Position never leaves the phone.
- Sparse polling. Live data is re-read every 30 minutes while the alarm is more than 6 hours away, every 15 minutes above 3 hours, every 10 minutes above 1 hour and every minute in the last hour.
- Server alarm for the locked screen. A browser page cannot run while the phone is locked, so the armed alarm is also stored on a small server that re-evaluates the arrival on the same cadence and sends push notifications at alarm time: up to eight within about 20 minutes, in widening intervals, until you tap "I'm awake" (also possible from the notification itself). Cancelled stops trigger an immediate notification. If you add a Pushover key (optional), the server additionally triggers a loud emergency alarm, see below.
Coverage: live delays for long-distance trains
Checked against real arrival boards in October 2026. Timetables are available everywhere; this map is about live delays. A dot marks countries served through the backend rather than an open feed.
| Country | Live delays | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Austria | live | ÖBB Scotty via backend: ÖBB, WESTbahn, GySEV, private railways, cross-border trains |
| Germany | live | DELFI GTFS-RT (DB long-distance and regional) via Transitous; also ÖBB Scotty |
| Switzerland | live | opentransportdata.swiss via Transitous; also ÖBB Scotty |
| Italy | live | RFI arrival boards (iechub.rfi.it) via backend: every train (Trenitalia, Italo, regional operators) with its current delay at your destination; appears on the board a few hours before arrival |
| France | live | SNCF GTFS-RT (TGV INOUI/OUIGO, Intercités, TER) via Transitous |
| Netherlands, Belgium | live | OpenOV (NS), SNCB via Transitous |
| Poland | live | PKP Intercity via Transitous |
| Norway, Great Britain, Ireland, Portugal | live | Entur, Network Rail, TFI, CP feeds via Transitous |
| Hungary | partial | MÁV Vonatinfo via backend: current delay and position of the train, no stop list |
| Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Luxembourg, Finland, Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Baltics | partial | Feeds exist on Transitous but cover only some operators or regions |
| Spain | partial | Renfe Cercanías only; no open realtime for long-distance trains |
| Denmark, Sweden | none | Rejseplanen and Trafikverket offer realtime only with a registered API key; not connected yet. GPS estimate takes over. |
Limits you should know
- A notification is not an alarm. A web page can only show a push notification: your phone plays its normal notification sound once, silent mode and Do Not Disturb mute it, and it cannot loop or ring louder. That is often not enough to wake a deep sleeper. Two ways around it: keep the app open with the screen dimmed and the phone charging (the app then rings its own looping alarm), or use the optional loud alarm: with the free-to-register Pushover service and its app (one-time purchase after a free trial) the server sends an emergency-priority message that rings loudly, repeats every 30 seconds and ignores silent mode and Do Not Disturb until you confirm. A web app cannot set a native phone alarm by itself.
- Foreground without the server alarm. Keep the app open with the screen on (it holds a wake lock; dim the screen and put the phone face down on the charger). With the server alarm, push notifications reach a locked phone, but Do Not Disturb or Sleep Focus silences them: switch it off or allow the browser / the home-screen app through. On iPhone, push works only for the home-screen app (iOS 16.4+).
- No signal, no update. Tunnels and dead zones freeze the data; the last known times stay in force and the warning turns red after 15 minutes. The GPS estimate keeps working with the last fix.
- Test it once at home. Arm a train that arrives soon, use "Test push", lock the phone, check the notification arrives.
Data and privacy
- Station and train searches go to Transitous and, where it applies, to the backend. The backend forwards them to ÖBB, Trenitalia or MÁV.
- With the server alarm on, the backend stores your train, stop, lead time, the push subscription of your browser and, if you entered one, your Pushover user key until a few hours after arrival, then deletes them.
- Your position is used only on the phone for the GPS estimate and is never sent anywhere.
- Everything is open source (MIT): github.com/anna7br/side-quests.
Kurzfassung auf Deutsch
Arrive Awake weckt dich eine wählbare Zeit vor der tatsächlichen, verspätungsbereinigten Ankunft deines Zuges, nicht zu einer festen Uhrzeit. Zielbahnhof wählen, Zug wählen, Vorlauf einstellen, scharf stellen.
Die erwartete Ankunft kommt aus Echtzeitdaten der Betreiber: für Österreich, Italien und Ungarn über ein kleines Backend (ÖBB Scotty, RFI-Ankunftstafeln, MÁV Vonatinfo), sonst über Transitous (DB, SBB, SNCF, NS, SNCB, PKP und weitere). Wo es keine Echtzeit gibt, schätzt die App die Verspätung aus deiner GPS-Position auf der Strecke. Keine Echtzeit gibt es derzeit für Dänemark und Schweden, nur teilweise für Spanien, Tschechien, Slowakei und den Balkan.
Bei gesperrtem Bildschirm weckt dich der Server-Wecker per Push-Benachrichtigung; "Nicht stören" musst du dafür ausschalten oder dem Browser eine Ausnahme geben. Vorher einmal zu Hause mit "Test-Push" ausprobieren.