Your ELR and mileage, wherever you're standing.

Your mileage, live

Open the app and the card under the map shows your ELR with miles and yards, and miles and chains. It updates as you walk, and it tells you how good your GPS fix is so you know how much to trust it.

Where it helps

• Giving someone your location in the terms the railway uses, without hunting for the nearest milepost.
• Sending a team the ELR and mileage of where to meet, not a pin dropped by a road.
• Writing a mileage into a report while you're still stood at the spot.

The railway data is built into the app, so the readings carry on without a signal. Only the map background needs a connection.

Photos that record where they were taken

Take a photo from the app and it saves to your gallery with the ELR, mileage and time stamped on it. With Pro you add your own label, like "Signal MP212", and the chainage and grid reference go on too.

Where it helps

• Defect reports where the photo says exactly where it was taken.
• A morning's photos that still make sense when you sort through them a month later.
• Handovers, without a separate list of which photo was where.

Look before you go Pro

Explore Mode lets you move the map and read the ELR, mileage and track ID anywhere on the network. It also shows how far that spot is from where you're standing.

Where it helps

• Planning a site visit from your desk, so you arrive already knowing the mileage of the bridge or structure you're there for.
• Working out the mileage of something you can see on the map but can't easily get to.
• Checking where a job starts and finishes before the paperwork is written.

Find a mileage and walk to it Pro

Search for an ELR and mileage, a station, a grid reference or a latitude and longitude, and the map goes straight there. Set it as a target and the app shows the direction and distance to walk, counting down as you go. Or hand it to your navigation app for the drive.

Where it helps

• Finding a work site from the ELR and mileage on a job sheet.
• Walking from an access point to a structure you've never been to.
• Getting to the nearest road first, then walking the last part.

The arrow follows your direction of travel rather than the compass, because steel rails and overhead line equipment upset a phone's compass.

Site Notes: a site walk in one file Pro

Drop a pin at anything that matters as you walk: a defect, an asset, an access point, a work area. Add a name, notes, photos and measurements, and every pin is stamped with its ELR, mileage and grid reference. When you're done, export the set as a single .kmz file.

Open it in Google Earth back at the office and every pin sits where it was dropped, with its photos and notes attached. Nobody needs the app to read it.

Where it helps

• A walkout for a scheme, sent to the office as one file instead of a folder of photos and a spreadsheet.
• Logging a run of defects along a section in one go.
• Recording access, work areas and anything worth knowing for whoever comes next.

Your own drawings on the live map Pro

Import a KML or KMZ file and it's drawn over the railway map, with your live position on top. Work areas, possession limits, signal numbers, a mark-out: whatever your office already produces in Google Earth.

Where it helps

• Carrying a site layout on your phone instead of a printed plan.
• Seeing your position against a mark-out as you walk it.
• Planning at a desk, recording on site with Site Notes, and sending both back as KMZ.

Overlays show your own data. The app doesn't check it, so make sure you carry the current version, and never use it in place of your SSOW pack.