Using Next3Trains with Shortcuts

Justin Clarke-Salt

Next3Trains provides three actions you can use in the Shortcuts app to build your own automations. All three run in the background without opening the app, so they work as one step in a longer shortcut.

Check My Trains

The same action Siri uses. It takes no parameters - it works out which of your saved routes is most relevant from your location, your widget, or the route you last looked at - and returns the next three departures with times, platforms and any delays.

Use this when you want your usual commute with no setting up. It’s also the action to use if you want to give Siri your own phrase, which is covered in Why isn’t Siri working?.

Next Trains To Station

New in version 1.11. It takes one parameter, To - the station you’re heading for - and works out where you’re leaving from the same way Check My Trains does: it’s the departure station of your most relevant saved route. The destination doesn’t have to be part of a saved route, and you can search the full list of stations when you pick it. It returns the next three departures as text.

This is also the action behind the Siri phrase “Next trains to London Bridge in Next3Trains” - see Why isn’t Siri working?.

Get Train Times

This one takes a From Station and a To Station, so it isn’t limited to the routes you’ve saved - you can ask about any two stations on the network.

  • You can give it either a station name or a 3-letter CRS code, so “Manchester Piccadilly” and “MAN” both work. You can type it, paste it, or pass in a variable from an earlier step.
  • If what you type matches more than one station, Shortcuts will ask you which one you meant.
  • It always fetches fresh data rather than reusing anything cached.
  • Since version 1.11, running it with Text output also shows a card of the trains - the same card Siri shows, headed “Trains from Leeds to York”. With JSON output you get a one-line confirmation instead. What the action passes to the next step of your shortcut is unchanged, so existing shortcuts keep working.

Output Format lets you choose between:

  • Text - a readable summary, which is what you want if the next step is showing it, speaking it, or sending it to someone.
  • JSON - structured data, if the next step is going to pick it apart in an automation.

Note that Get Train Times is available in Shortcuts but is not voice-activated - you can’t ask Siri for it directly. If a destination is all you need to say, use the “Next trains to…” phrase instead; if you want to name both stations by voice, wrap Get Train Times in a shortcut and give that shortcut a name you can say.

One thing to watch: if you give a shortcut of your own exactly the same name as one of these actions, Siri may run yours instead of the app’s. Call it something different.

Some things you might build

  • A commute automation that runs when you leave work and sends your trains home to a Watch notification.
  • A shortcut on your Home Screen for a journey you make occasionally but haven’t saved as a route.
  • A morning routine that reads your departures out alongside the weather.

What isn’t in the actions list

Only the three actions above appear in Shortcuts. The app has a few other internal actions - the widget’s refresh button, the Control Center control, and the deep link Spotlight uses to open a saved route - but these are deliberately hidden, because they only make sense as part of the thing they belong to rather than as steps in a shortcut.

For opening the app at a particular route, use Spotlight instead - your saved routes are indexed there on iOS 18 and later.