Realtime Trains was launched in October 2012 by Tom Cairns, a student at the University of Southampton.

[1][2] In March 2020, Abellio ScotRail became the first operator to share additional rolling stock information with Realtime Trains.

[3] The additional information was dubbed Know Your Train, and includes a visual overview of the type of rolling stock and number of carriages used by each service.

Initially, Track Your Train is only available on selected services starting at London Liverpool Street.

[8] The data presented on Realtime Trains is created using a variety of sources and human input.