
Show HN: Get redirected to departures of the nearest railway station in Germany - orless
https://bahnhof.direct
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orless
This is a simple webapp which redirects the user to the departure board of the
closest railway station in Germany. Departure board service is provided by
Deutsche Bahn (German Railways), I only had to implement a search of the
railway station closest to user's location. Plus a trivial redirection.

I have a few questions would really appreciate some advice.

First, in some cases people are not happy with the "closest" station as they
prefer a different one. Some people said they'd like to select from 3-5-10
closest stations, some said they'd like to type in the station name. I can
understand this, but from the other hand I really like this almost-zero-
interaction interface. I'm not sure how to combine it.

Another point is that a website with automatic redirect is not easily
bookmarkable. I was thinking about embedding the departure board in an iframe
and leaving some space for controls, but I'm not quite sure.

Next, I'd like to monetize it just a little bit, just to make it self-
supporting. The domain costs around 35$ a year, infrastructure would be also
around 50-100$. Not huge and surely something a can afford. But I'm still
interested how a project like this could be made self-supporting. Ads? But I
have nowhere to place them, it's just a redirect.

I'd also be grateful for general feedback and suggestions.

