About Gaze
Gaze connects your train ride to the places around you. Point your phone out the window, hear the story of what you are passing, and keep the places you want to remember. Geographic proximity and phone direction suggest a place; they do not prove visibility or identify a structure from an image. Left and right cues come from the route geometry and your direction of travel, not from a camera.
Location & device data
Your GPS and compass readings are processed on your device. We download places for your selected route; your precise location and movement history are not sent to our discovery server. Your selected route, provider requests, and normal technical request information may be visible to our hosting providers. Your ride and its discovery queue stay in this browser until you end the ride. Bookmarks stay on this device until you remove them or clear site data. A bookmark keeps the story and sources already on the card, not your location history, photos, or audio. Offline downloads are stored in this browser's cache.
With the app open, location and heading update as you travel. Locked screens and background browser tabs can suspend these readings. Starting a ride requests device permissions; ending a ride stops sensors. You can revoke permissions in your browser settings. Optional voice questions use your browser's speech recognition, which may send audio to its speech provider. Gaze does not receive or store that recording. The recognized question and selected place are sent to our server and Gemini to prepare a sourced answer. Approved answer text is sent to ElevenLabs for speech and may be kept in our private narration cache.
Data sources
California Zephyr route geometry, stations, and timetable come from Amtrak's published GTFS. Long Island Rail Road data comes from the MTA. Gaze is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Amtrak or the MTA. Route data may be incomplete or outdated, and nothing here predicts service.
Places along the Zephyr come from Wikidata (CC0); tunnels, rivers, and canyons from © OpenStreetMap contributors, under the Open Database License. Download the route snapshot and the Rockies places.
Historical source passages and adaptations from Wikipedia are attributed on individual cards and available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Stories are generated and checked through LangChain and Gemini using quoted source evidence; translations are made only from checked English text. An automated evidence check is not a guarantee that the source itself is correct. Places with no checked story are described only by their map and Wikidata fields, labeled as basic info.
Photographs come from Google Places or Wikimedia Commons, with the photographer, source, and license on each image. Historic photographs are public-domain or openly licensed images from Wikimedia Commons and the Library of Congress, credited under each comparison. Air quality comes from Open-Meteo and is informational only.
Terms
Use this application as a passenger and respect your surroundings. Discovery information is provided as available, without guarantees of accuracy, availability, or line of sight. No-signal stretches are estimates. Google features are subject to the Google Terms of Service and Google Privacy Policy. Google receives photo requests and technical connection information when images load. Supabase stores the LIRR catalog and narration cache; Gemini processes source passages without passenger location data.