LineRef – rail track locator – is out today on Google Play. It tells you where you are on the Great Britain railway: your Engineer’s Line Reference (ELR), your mileage in miles and yards, and which track you’re on, from your phone’s GPS, with or without a signal.
It puts on your phone what you would otherwise piece together from line diagrams, sectional appendices and a map.
What it does
- Your ELR and mileage in miles and yards (or kilometres on metric lines), from Network Rail’s calibrated measures.
- Which track you’re on: its ID and name, how far you are from its centreline, and the next nearest when GPS can’t be sure.
- A compass arrow towards higher mileage, so you know which way to walk.
- Your grid reference in OSGB36 and your WGS84 coordinates, converted with OSTN15.
- A railway map: ELR lines and mileposts over OpenStreetMap or Ordnance Survey maps. Tap anywhere to read the ELR, mileage and track there.
- Worksites with chainage datums, read out live beside the mileage.
- Site notes and photo sets stamped with ELR, mileage, track and grid reference, shared as a PDF.
- Your own layers: access points, possession limits or work areas from KML, KMZ, GeoJSON, CSV, WKT or survey text files, in GPS or OSGB36 coordinates.
A rail track locator that works without a signal
The whole network’s track data lives on the phone, so finding your ELR, mileage and track never needs a connection. Maps for a site can be downloaded before you go, along a stretch of line or around an area, and your own layers sit over them.
Checked against the mileposts
LineRef’s track data is built from Network Rail’s Track Model, published through the Rail Data Marketplace, and refreshed as each new release comes out. Before a release reaches the app, its mileage is checked against the mileposts. In the current build, from Network Rail’s 26 October 2026 release, 99.41% of the mileposts checked are within 5 yards.
The limit is your phone’s GPS. It can be tens of metres out, more in cuttings, tunnels and stations, and the app tells you when it can’t be sure which track you’re on.
Free, with Pro when you need it
Locating yourself is free, for as long as you like: your ELR, mileage and track from GPS, the railway map, one worksite with a chainage datum, five site notes, three photo sets, one layer and three offline map areas.
LineRef Pro adds finding by exact mileage or chainage, navigating along the line, the compass for every ELR near you, track centrelines on the map, full-detail track data, OS Road and Outdoor maps, layer styles and labels, and lifts the limits. It is £79.99 a year or £7.99 a month through Google Play, with the first month free.
On the web too
Every ELR line and milepost is on the LineRef web map, free in your browser, on any computer, iPhone or tablet. Click near a line for its ELR and mileage, click a milepost to see how closely the calibrated mileage agrees with it, or search by grid reference, eastings and northings, or latitude and longitude. Sign in with a LineRef account and Pro bought in the app counts there too.
Private by design
No account needed, no ads and no tracking. Your location is used on your phone and never sent to us. Notes, photos and saved places stay on your phone unless you share them.
Use it safely
LineRef is a reference tool. Never rely on it for a safety-critical decision or to identify the line you are protecting or working on. Use it only from a position of safety, and check every location against your safe system of work and approved sources.
Try it
Get LineRef on Google Play, read more about it at lineref.co.uk, or watch the one-minute video of the app at work. The iPhone version is on its way.
If something is wrong or missing, please tell us through the LineRef contact page. And if it helps you on site, a review on Google Play helps other people find it.
Contains Network Rail data from the Rail Data Marketplace, licensed under the Open Government Licence. LineRef is not affiliated with or endorsed by Network Rail.