V3 API — vehicle position/labeling issues on specific commuter rail cab cars

[Nathan Zhang]

Hello,

I built a commuter rail tracker for railfans that uses the V3 API to show which locomotive is leading each consist: https://lightning-stripes.vercel.app. Users have surfaced a few equipment-specific data issues in the vehicle feed:

• Cab car #1815 never reports a position — trains running with it simply don't appear on the map at all. This one likely needs the onboard AVL/transponder hardware serviced, and fixing it would help every MBTA tracker, including MBTA Go.
  
• Cab #1846 frequently reports as #1806 (wrong label).
  
• Cab #1859 frequently reports at the wrong location and gets confused with #1716.

The last two are lower-impact and mostly affect niche use cases like mine, but #1815 going completely dark is the most significant since it's an outright gap in the live feed for all trackers including those meant for passengers. I understand these may be hardware or upstream data issues that aren't quick to resolve, but I wanted to flag them in case they're helpful. Happy to provide specific dates/times or example trips if that would make them easier to track down.

Thanks for maintaining the V3 API. It's been great to build on!

Best,
Nathan