Rail Data Engine
From where — to anywhere worth going.
Routing answers how to get somewhere. Recommendations answer where to go. We provide rankings of the best rail destinations and routes for your users and criteria.
Three modes
Destinations
Given an origin and constraints, return a ranked list of destinations worth travelling to.
Journeys
Given candidate routes, score and order them by your criteria.
Discovery
Surface serendipitous, high-quality suggestions for inspiration-led browsing.
Key parameters
-
origin and optional destination -
max_travel_time -
prefer[]: scenic, direct, night_train, international, regional, heritage -
trip_type -
output_count -
custom scoring weights
Example
POST https://api.viaduct.world/v1/recommendations/destinations
Content-Type: application/json
{
"origin": "Wien Hbf",
"max_travel_time": 240,
"prefer": ["scenic", "international"],
"output_count": 3
}{
"destinations": [
{ "rank": 1, "name": "Salzburg Hbf", "travel_time_minutes": 142, "transfers": 0, "score": 0.94 },
{ "rank": 2, "name": "Praha hl.n.", "travel_time_minutes": 236, "transfers": 0, "score": 0.89 },
{ "rank": 3, "name": "München Hbf", "travel_time_minutes": 228, "transfers": 0, "score": 0.86 }
]
}Who uses this
- Travel and booking apps adding rail inspiration
- Tourism boards promoting reachable destinations
- Corporate travel tools proposing efficient rail options
Frequently asked questions
- What data powers the scoring?
- Scoring is based on the same station graph, timetable layer, and network topology as the rest of the viaduct Rail Data Engine, combined with custom weights and tunable parameters.
- Can I customize the ranking?
- Yes. You can adjust the parameters, so the same API can rank according to your objectives.
- Is personalization supported?
- You can pass per-user preferences at query time, so recommendations adapt to each traveller without exposing their data to us.
- Can it be white-labeled?
- Yes. The API returns structured results you present entirely within your own product and branding.
- What geography is covered?
- Recommendations run on rail networks worldwide, with coverage varying by region. We will confirm current scope for your target regions.
- How is this different from the routing API?
- Routing tells you how to go from origin to destination you already chose. Our recommendations surface potential destinations or multi-leg journey options. These are a ranking problems and not just optimizing for the fastest route.
Help users find where to go next.
Request access and we will tailor the scoring to your product.