OpenRailwayMap/API

Terms of use

OpenRailwayMap is a non-commercial project, financed by donations and run by volunteers. Our infrastructure has a limited capacity, therefore we allow using the API and the tiles under the following conditions:

• Small scale applications with few or relatively small requests are allowed to use the API and tiles free and without charge.
• Generally there is no differentiation between commercial and non-commercial applications; however, financial support is highly appreciated.
• Applications have to send an unique User-Agent (name and website URL) with their requests in order to be able to contact the maintainers them if there are any problems. If tiles are embedded into a website, it is technically not possible to send a User-Agent. In this use cases it is not necessary to send a User-Agent due to the fact that the browser automatically sends a referer while loading the images. This referer string is sufficient as an identification.
• Users sending large scale API queries or tile requests will be blocked and - if identifiable - contacted.
• If your application was blocked, we either give you tips on how the required functionality can be set up on your own server, or would allow a further use of our services in exchange for financial support.
• Most API requests should normally take no longer than 3 seconds. In any case, you should write your application so that it will time out requests after ca. 5 seconds. If multiple requests fail in a row, your application should assume that the service is not available and slow down the rate of attempts.
• The API limits the rate of requests to a sensible level. The limits are designed to protect the API from too heavy load, and to protect the database contents from harvesting. If your application hits the limits and you'd like to have a larger quota, please get in touch and describe your application's needs in detail.
• The application may only request data or tiles when it is actively needed by the end-user. If you want to perform bulk requests, add some delays to let your bulk request behave like a human users. And generally try to use as much caching as possible to reduce the load.
• The availability is generally very good, but there are no guarantees. Remind that this is a free service offered by a non-commercial community project. If you need a full reliable service, you should set up your own instance of this API or tile server.

The OpenRailwayMap data, which comes from from the OpenStreetMap database, is available under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL). The OpenRailwayMap tiles are available under Creative-Commons license Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 (CC-BY-SA 2.0).

Using the OpenRailwayMap tiles requires this attribution:

Data <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright">© OpenStreetMap contributors</a>, Style: <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">CC-BY-SA 2.0</a> <a href="http://www.openrailwaymap.org/">OpenRailwayMap</a>

Using also standard OpenStreetMap tiles as a background map, which is the case if you are including the OpenRailwayMap slippy map into your website, requires this attribution:

Data <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright">© OpenStreetMap contributors</a>, Style: <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">CC-BY-SA 2.0</a> <a href="http://www.openrailwaymap.org/">OpenRailwayMap</a> and OpenStreetMap

If data is requested by using our API, the following attribution is required:

Data <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright">© OpenStreetMap contributors</a>, Service by <a href="http://www.openrailwaymap.org/">OpenRailwayMap</a>

Attributions with text colour equal to the background colour, very small font sizes, full or partly hidden text and disabled links do not count.

Tiles

The map tiles follow the standard Web Mercator tile format - also known as Spherical Mercator, OpenStreetMap or Google tiles. They are usually supported natively by any map library that you are using, but read on if you want to know more details.

The bitmap tiles have a size of 512 x 512 pixels and are in PNG format. The usable resolution is 256 x 256 pixels because the tiles are rendered in "retina" resolution. The projection is Spherical Mercator - known by the projection codes EPSG:3857, EPSG:900913 and EPSG:3785. They can be accessed under this URL:

http://${s}.tiles.openrailwaymap.org/${style}/${z}/${x}/${y}.png

Modern browsers restrict the number of simultaneous image request to one domain by default. To work around this limitation and load tiles faster, we can make simultaneous requests to multiple domains which point to the same server. Replacing the placeholder ${s} by a, b or c creates different subdomains. The subdomain is optional and can be omitted if it is not needed.

The placeholder ${style} has to be replaced by the name of a rendering style. Currently there are the following styles:

var openrailwaymap = new OpenLayers.Layer.XYZ("OpenRailwayMap", ["http://a.tiles.openrailwaymap.org/standard/${z}/${x}/${y}.png","http://b.tiles.openrailwaymap.org/standard/${z}/${x}/${y}.png","http://c.tiles.openrailwaymap.org/standard/${z}/${x}/${y}.png"],
{
	sphericalMercator: true,
	opacity: 1,
	visibility: false,
	transparent: true,
	noOpaq: true,
	isBaseLayer: false,
	attribution: '<a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright">© OpenStreetMap contributors</a>, Style: <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">CC-BY-SA 2.0</a> <a href="http://www.openrailwaymap.org/">OpenRailwayMap</a> and OpenStreetMap'
});
map.addLayer(openrailwaymap);

var openrailwaymap = new ol.layer.Tile({
    title: 'OpenRailwayMap',
    visible: true,
    source : new ol.source.XYZ({
                attributions : [
                    ol.source.OSM.ATTRIBUTION,
                    new ol.Attribution({
                        html : 'Style: <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">CC-BY-SA 2.0</a> <a href="http://www.openrailwaymap.org/">OpenRailwayMap</a> and OpenStreetMap'
                    })
                ],
                url : 'http://{a-c}.tiles.openrailwaymap.org/standard/{z}/{x}/{y}.png',
                crossOrigin: null, //make it work inside canvas
                tilePixelRatio: 2, //server returns 512px img for 256 tiles
                maxZoom: 19, // XYZ's default is 18
                opaque: true
            })
        })
map.addLayer(openrailwaymap);

var openrailwaymap = new L.TileLayer('http://{s}.tiles.openrailwaymap.org/standard/{z}/{x}/{y}.png',
{
	attribution: '<a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright">© OpenStreetMap contributors</a>, Style: <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">CC-BY-SA 2.0</a> <a href="http://www.openrailwaymap.org/">OpenRailwayMap</a> and OpenStreetMap',
	minZoom: 2,
	maxZoom: 19,
	tileSize: 256
}).addTo(map);

https://tiles.openrailwaymap.org/standard/{z}/{x}/{y}.png

<GDAL_WMS>
	<Service name="TMS">
		<ServerUrl>http://tiles.openrailwaymap.org/${style}/${z}/${x}/${y}.png</ServerUrl>
	</Service>
	<DataWindow>
		<UpperLeftX>-20037508.34</UpperLeftX>
		<UpperLeftY>20037508.34</UpperLeftY>
		<LowerRightX>20037508.34</LowerRightX>
		<LowerRightY>-20037508.34</LowerRightY>
		<TileLevel>19</TileLevel>
		<TileCountX>1</TileCountX>
		<TileCountY>1</TileCountY>
		<YOrigin>top</YOrigin>
	</DataWindow>
	<Projection>EPSG:3857</Projection>
	<BlockSizeX>512</BlockSizeX>
	<BlockSizeY>512</BlockSizeY>
	<BandsCount>4</BandsCount>
	<Cache>
		<Path>/tmp/cache_osm_rail</Path>
	</Cache>
</GDAL_WMS>

API

The OpenRailwayMap provides a RESTful HTTP API which makes it easy to request railway data in OpenStreetMap. Requests are received via GET, the results are returned as JSON data.

The API supports Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS), by sending Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * in the header for each response.

URL parameters and iframes