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Possible Trains

When you search for trains on a specific date, Renfe Tracker doesn't just show you the trains that Renfe has currently published for that day — it also shows you trains that haven't been published yet but are very likely to run.

Why does this matter?​

Renfe publishes train schedules progressively. A train that you know runs every Tuesday might not appear in search results yet for a date that's many weeks away. Without this feature, you'd have to keep checking back until the train shows up before you can start tracking its price.

How it works​

When you search for trains on a date, the app also fetches train schedules for the same weekday across multiple previous weeks (up to RENFE_REFERENCE_WEEKS weeks back, default 10). Any train that:

  1. Ran on that weekday in at least one reference week, and
  2. Is not yet published for the requested date

…is marked as a possible train.

Requested date: Tuesday, 15 April
Reference dates: Tuesday 8 Apr, Tue 1 Apr, Tue 25 Mar, …

Trains on reference dates  ──►  Union of all seen trains
                                        │
                                        ▼
                              Trains missing from 15 Apr
                                        │
                                        ▼
                              Marked as "possible trains"

In the UI​

Possible trains appear in search results with a dashed border and a "Tren posible" badge to distinguish them from confirmed published trains. Their price is shown as "not yet available" since Renfe hasn't published it, but you can start tracking the trip right away — the tracker will begin checking as soon as Renfe publishes a price.

Configuration​

VariableDefaultEffect
RENFE_POSSIBLE_TRAINS1Set to 0 to disable possible train inference entirely.
RENFE_REFERENCE_WEEKS10Number of same-weekday weeks to look back. More weeks = better coverage but slower first search.
tip

Set RENFE_REFERENCE_WEEKS=0 if you only want to see currently published trains and skip the historical lookups. This makes searches faster but disables both possible trains and price range estimation.