Delay Alerts for Your Train: How to Set Up Push Notifications

Updated: August 2026 – A delay alert for your train doesn’t just save you waiting time on the platform, it’s also the most underrated tool in spotting: set up properly, it doesn’t report your own journey but the train you’re waiting for. This guide shows both setups – the commuter version and the spotter version – and what you can do when no notification arrives.

How do I set up a delay alert for my train?

You set up a delay alert in four steps: search for the train or journey in the app, open the trip view, activate monitoring there, and then grant permission for notifications in the operating system. The fourth step is the one most often forgotten – the app will then save the alert but can’t deliver it.

A delay alert is nothing more than server-side monitoring: a service continuously compares the scheduled and actual times of your saved train and sends a push message as soon as a defined threshold is exceeded. How that actual time comes about in the first place is explained in the guide to live tracking of trains and buses.

The three alert types – and what they’re good for

Before you set anything up, decide which question the alert should answer. There are three fundamentally different kinds.

Journey alert

You save a specific trip from A to B with a departure time. The service monitors all legs, including changes, and reports when a connection is about to fail. This is the standard for commuters and the only type that takes changes into account.

Route alert

You subscribe to a corridor instead of a train. It reports disruptions, closures and diversions on that section for which DB InfraGO is responsible as infrastructure manager – regardless of whether you’re travelling at the time. This is exactly the principle described in the guide to the DB Streckenagent for disruptions and diversions. For spotters it’s the best early warning for diverted trains.

Train alert

You monitor a single train number. No change of train, no journey – just this one train. This is spotter mode: you want to know when the train will pass your location, not whether you’ll make a connection. The basics are covered in the guide to tracking DB train numbers.

Alert type	What you save	Reports	Ideal for	Typical weakness
Journey alert	Trip from A to B with time	Delay, cancellation, connection at risk	Commuters and travellers	ends with the trip, no ongoing monitoring
Route alert	Section or line	Disruption, closure, diversion	Early warning, hunting diverted trains	says nothing about individual trains
Train alert	Train number or line	Delay of this train, sometimes platform change	The train you want at your photo spot	only as good as the real-time feed
Event alert	Notification type, e.g. platform change	exactly this event	Tight connections, fixed locations	far from universally available

Step by step: setting up an alert that actually arrives

The spotter twist: an alert on the train you want, not on your journey

Most guides stop at the commuter. For spotters, though, the interesting part begins exactly where you’re not travelling at all.

The idea is simple: instead of monitoring your journey, you put the alert on the train that interests you photographically – a diverted train, a rarely used diagram, a special run or a working that often has a special vehicle. The push then tells you whether it’s worth heading to the spot and when you need to be there.

For this to work, you need three things prepared in advance:

• Know the train number. Without the right number you’ll be monitoring the wrong thing. How to read it is explained in the overview on decoding train numbers for ICE, IC, RE and RB.
• Choose your location beforehand. An alert is of little use if you only start looking for a photo spot once it arrives. Use a prepared collection of spots as described in the trainspotter map.
• A second source for the vehicle. The timetable service knows the train, not the vehicle. That gap is filled by community sightings, as described in the guide to live sightings in real time.

Is your alert setup right? The self-test

Why no notification arrives: the four usual causes

If the push doesn’t come, it’s almost never down to an error in the timetable database. Work through this order:

1. No real-time data for the line. Not every transport operator feeds in actual data. Without an actual time there’s no deviation, and therefore no alert.
2. Permission missing. Notifications were refused on first launch or later muted system-wide.
3. Battery-saving feature. Some manufacturers aggressively terminate background processes. Adding the app as an exception usually solves this.
4. Time window expired. Many alerts only apply to the chosen day or until arrival. After that you have to set them again.

Only once all four points are sorted is it worth looking at alternatives. Which tools have which data is set out in the comparison live train radar and the best tools.

What to watch out for

• A forecast isn’t a measurement. The number of minutes reported is a projection and changes with every reporting point. Treat it as a trend.
• Too many alerts are worse than none. If you get a push for every two-minute deviation, you’ll eventually ignore the important cancellation notice too. Set the threshold deliberately higher.
• Platform changes often come late. This notification is frequently only generated shortly before the train arrives. So don’t plan in a way that a platform change would wreck your journey or your photo.
• Alerts expire. Once the journey is over, that’s it. For recurring trains, check whether your app offers permanent monitoring.
• Plan for two channels. An alert alone says nothing about the vehicle, formation or traction. If you need that, add community sources such as the trainspotter app overview or a sightings platform.
• Safety is still safety. Even the best push doesn’t justify a sprint across the platform, let alone being in the track area. Better to miss the train than to take risks. The basics are covered in the tips for new trainspotters.

Conclusion

A delay alert is quick to set up, but only useful if the type, notification types and advance warning time match the actual question. Commuters need the journey alert with connection logic; spotters need the train alert on the train number plus a route alert as an early warning. The technology behind it is the same – the difference lies entirely in the setup.