Stories on Tracks

A contemplative experience

51 000 trains. Countless lives in transit.

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About

Right now, somewhere in France, tens of thousands of trains are moving. Each one carries people . Tired people, hopeful people, people who have just made an irreversible decision.

Stories on Tracks displays the entire French rail network in real time, drawn from official SNCF open data. Click on any train to discover who is on board: strangers with names, ages, professions, and quiet inner lives, procedurally woven from fragments of fiction.

There is no objective. No score. Only the map, the movement, and the feeling that every dot of light is someone going somewhere.

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Features

• Real-time train positions interpolated from official SNCF GTFS data
• Over 51 000 daily journeys across TGV, TER, Intercités, Ouigo, and more
• Fictional passengers: names, ages, professions, travel reasons, inner fragments
• Passenger biographies that persist across sessions and reset each day
• Interactive map with zoom, pan, station highlights, and route display
• Localised in 8 languages: EN, FR, IT, DE, ES, PT, PL, UA
• Zero game loop. Purely observational

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Controls

Scroll wheel — Zoom in / out
Middle click drag — Pan the map
W A S D — Pan the map
Left click — Select a train
Right click / Esc — Close panel
+ button — Options & language

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DATA · SNCF Open Data (GTFS + GeoJSON) · Natural Earth | ENGINE · Unity 2D / URP | ASSISTED BY · Claude (Anthropic)