OpenStreetMap
… railway departure boards in pubs.
A surprising number of pubs near stations in the UK have them now. The picture above (a detail from this Manchester Evening New article) is from the Victoria Tap in Manchester.
A search of the OSM data in the UK** finds a few, but I’m sure that there are more. A web search finds a bunch of suppliers, and many of their “here’s what you could have in your pub” examples are clearly in the southeast and southwest of England, so I’m sure that there are more to be mapped!
** That’s a simple postpass query:
{{data:sql,server=https://postpass.geofabrik.de/api/0.2/}}
SELECT osm_id, tags, geom
FROM postpass_pointpolygon
WHERE tags->>'amenity'='pub'
AND tags->>'departures_board' is not null
AND geom && {{bbox}}
Discussion
Comment from mmd on 1 February 2026 at 10:30
Wait, where is the part in the query that checks if “pubs are near stations”?
Comment from SomeoneElse on 1 February 2026 at 13:10
@mmd If there’s a pub, and there’s a railway real-time departures board there, where do you think the pub is likely to be? :)
Comment from mmd on 1 February 2026 at 13:31
I really meant the missing ones, so pubs near stations that don’t have a departure board in osm and might benefit from a local survey.
Comment from SomeoneElse on 1 February 2026 at 13:46
Ah - I see what you mean. The tricky bit might be “recording the absence of something that isn’t very common, and doesn’t usually occur with that object anyway”.
Comment from TheSwavu on 15 February 2026 at 21:58
Just stumbled over this article that made me think of this: https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/27/departure_boards/
Comment from SomeoneElse on 16 February 2026 at 20:40
There are a bunch of companies doing this, and a few of them have pretty identifiable in-pub shots of their wares that I bet a bit of sleuthing would be able to track down.
I did try and persuade the Sheffield Tap last week that they needed one and got the memorable response that they were “Nothing to do with the station”!