Thank you Tom C for your posts, I can understand you not wanting to take sides.
Retail manual updates and such are delivered to stations through a publishing company called tso. They, however, do not ever mention the routeing guide, even on the web. This presumably means ATOC does not even tell them.
When I got the post at this station there was three almost complete VT sections in the RM2!! So any updates do actually need to be put in, or taken out, as the case arises.
The Fastis ticket machine has updates from Cubic, who, I think, set up RJIS. Atoc swears by RJIS. I don't have RJIS though, so can't say what it says. I may try and get hold of someone I used to know well, that may still have access to it.
I have had an initial response to my request from Northern, which says "As a rule, if Fastis allows it then it is valid. If it is obviously wrong, as [the] example on the ATOC site, then it requires amending." This implies that Fastis may be wrong, but that I must assume it is right, until it says otherwise, unless I know it to be wrong, which would be unusual, particularly if it is regularly updated.
I fail to see how a clerk can discard a document which, due to no updates, (s)he considers valid and if the machine which (s)he is using states the same routes. Just because someone has the ability to check a web page doesn't mean that they will check it if there is no apparent reason to do so, particularly, as Tom C states, as no instructions are given to use the online guide.
Clerks are forbidden from downloading anything to Company equipment that has not been virus checked by the IT department and, in this case, ratified by the pricing policy department of the relevant company. This would mean that by the time the update disc has got round it would probably be out of date anyway.
How can a 1996 route guide be more valid than a 2008 guide?
I am being picky here, but:
Quote from the National Conditions of Carraige (ATOC) as currently displayed on the national rail website (published July 06):
"13. The route you are entitled to take
(a) ....
(iii) trains which take the routes shown in the National Routeing Guide
(details as to how you can obtain this information will be available
when you buy your ticket)."
The only information that is "officially" available at the ticket office is the 96 guide (as it has not been withdrawn or updated) and therefore any route must be contained within it, unless we can ignore the binding agreement between customer and railway because it is two years old and has clearly out of date information in it.
As I say, just being picky.