amtrak-status

A clean terminal user interface (TUI) for tracking Amtrak train status in real-time. No more manual page refreshing!

Features

• Auto-refresh: Automatically updates every 30 seconds (configurable)
• Visual progress bar: See journey completion at a glance
• Station-by-station breakdown: Scheduled, estimated, and actual times
• Color-coded status: Green for early/on-time, red for late, yellow for en-route
• Clean TUI: Built with Rich for a beautiful terminal experience

Installation

Using uv (recommended)

# Run directly without installing
uv run --with amtrak-status amtrak-status 42

# Or install as a project
uv sync
uv run amtrak-status 42

Using pip

pip install amtrak-status
amtrak-status 42

Usage

# Track the Pennsylvanian #42
amtrak-status 42

# Track the California Zephyr #5
amtrak-status 5

# Track with custom refresh interval (60 seconds)
amtrak-status 42 -r 60

# Display once and exit (no auto-refresh)
amtrak-status 42 --once

# Track a specific day's train (train 42 from the 26th)
amtrak-status 42-26

Options

Common Train Numbers

How It Works

This tool uses the Amtraker API, a community-built API that provides real-time Amtrak train tracking data. The API pulls from Amtrak's official Track Your Train system.

Troubleshooting

"Train Not Found"

• The train may not have started its journey yet today
• Double-check the train number on Amtrak's website
• The train may have already completed its journey

No updates showing

• The Amtraker API updates when Amtrak's system updates (typically every few minutes)
• Check your internet connection

Development

To contribute to this library, first checkout the code. Then create a new virtual environment:

cd amtrak-status
python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

Now install the dependencies and test dependencies:

python -m pip install -e '.[test]'

To run the tests:

python -m pytest

License

Apache-2.0

Credits

• Amtraker API by piemadd
• Rich for the beautiful TUI components