Use with Claude and other AI assistants

The archive has an MCP server. Connect it once and ask your assistant which countries have live train data, what a file contains, or for the code to load a month of delays.

Server address

https://www.train-archive.eu/mcp

Your assistant asks you to sign in the first time, with the same email code as this site. It then acts as you: its requests appear on your Usage page, and you can disconnect it from the Tokens page.

Claude

Claude on the web and in the desktop app

  1. Open Settings, then Connectors, and choose Add custom connector.
  2. Name it European Train Archive and paste https://www.train-archive.eu/mcp as the URL.
  3. Choose Connect and sign in with your email code.

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http train-archive https://www.train-archive.eu/mcp

Then run /mcp in Claude Code and choose train-archive to sign in.

Other MCP clients

Any client that speaks MCP over streamable HTTP with OAuth works: add https://www.train-archive.eu/mcp as a remote server and sign in when asked. Clients without OAuth can send an API token instead:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "train-archive": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://www.train-archive.eu/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" }
    }
  }
}

Create the token on the Tokens page.

What the assistant can do

list_sources
Sources by country, by kind of data kept, official or community.
get_coverage_summary
What the archive holds across Europe, and since when.
get_source_info
Date range, files, gaps, feed freshness and timetable versions of one source.
list_files
Addresses of the files for a source and a range of days.
preview_file
Columns and a few rows of one file, without downloading it.
connection_risk
How a planned journey would have gone over the past weeks: delays per leg, how often each change was missed, the next trains if it is.
plan_download
DuckDB, Polars and Python code that reads a range of days with your token.
get_guide
How the data is shaped and how to combine it: files to read, matching delays to timetables, stations across countries, which packages to use, known pitfalls.
get_api_token
A token for that code, saved in your environment rather than shown in the chat.

Files never pass through the conversation: the assistant looks at summaries and previews, then runs code that reads the data directly.