New National Rail website

[c52]

I've not read the whole thread, I'm afraid, but this new thing can only have come into being by someone asking, Can we make a website that's even worse than the existing one? It seems ok for one query as long as the first answer it comes up with is the one you want, but try to do two things - just now, see how a journey is an hour faster with four changes than one with three - and it just goes blank. Only option seems to be to close the window and start again.

Oh for the old matrix showing all the fares for all the trains for a few hours - choose your fare and we will tell you the rules.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

I've not read the whole thread, I'm afraid, but this new thing can only have come into being by someone asking, Can we make a website that's even worse than the existing one? It seems ok for one query as long as the first answer it comes up with is the one you want, but try to do two things - just now, see how a journey is an hour faster with four changes than one with three - and it just goes blank. Only option seems to be to close the window and start again.

Oh for the old matrix showing all the fares for all the trains for a few hours - choose your fare and we will tell you the rules.

For timetables rather than fares I no longer bother with National Rail; I recommend https://www.fastjp.com instead.

 

[AdamWW]

I've not read the whole thread, I'm afraid, but this new thing can only have come into being by someone asking, Can we make a website that's even worse than the existing one? It seems ok for one query as long as the first answer it comes up with is the one you want, but try to do two things - just now, see how a journey is an hour faster with four changes than one with three - and it just goes blank. Only option seems to be to close the window and start again.

Oh for the old matrix showing all the fares for all the trains for a few hours - choose your fare and we will tell you the rules.

I find https://traintimes.org.uk/ pretty good.

You can even just type in station codes without having to wait for the station name to materialise then click on it.

I think it works by scraping data from the National Rail web site.

 

[Statto]

I've not read the whole thread, I'm afraid, but this new thing can only have come into being by someone asking, Can we make a website that's even worse than the existing one? It seems ok for one query as long as the first answer it comes up with is the one you want, but try to do two things - just now, see how a journey is an hour faster with four changes than one with three - and it just goes blank. Only option seems to be to close the window and start again.

Oh for the old matrix showing all the fares for all the trains for a few hours - choose your fare and we will tell you the rules.

It's awful site now, the Rovers & Rangers page is a mess, with them thrown in at random rather than alphabetical order, so you have the daft situation of the West Wight Day Wanderer listed first then Derbyshire Wayfarer (Nottingham) next, that you have to scroll & look carefully down if you want something like Cheshire Day Ranger, although you can click on train operator.

Noticed the West Wight Day Wanderer still appears even if you click on Northern, it's not valid on Northern (the West Wight Day Wanderer ticket area is nowhere near Northern operating Area), on rail it's only valid on South Western Railway.

 

[yorksrob]

And still the shortcomings of this dreadful site keep coming.

If you go back to amend your journey details it defaults back to the time and place you're undertaking the search.

Worst, you have to go through the most convoluted process imaginable to find a return fare.

I find it hard to believe that this is an accident. This website feels like an act of sabotage.

 

[Route115?]

For some reason the Status & Disruption page is sometimes slow loading in Firefox but worked ok in Edge. That said, funnies like this happen all over the web.

I agree that having a single button to show reverse journeys would be much easier.

Its a general problem with rail websites that they try and personalise everything rather than give an overview. It can be really fiddly to find out if it is better to travel on other days to avoid engineering work, or to take a different route, etc.

Real time trains takes a bit of getting used to but once you know it it gives you the information you need. That sais I am retired rail staff and get free travel so I am only interested in times, not fares.

 

[HSTEd]

Forcing a certain ticket seller on you and sometimes just refusing to sell you a fare (thus ensuring the continuing march to compulsory reservations) are major reductions in capability.

 

[MikeWM]

Another great success for the new National Rail website. It, err, can't find any trains with available fares *whatever* for a Cambridge to Liverpool return, out on Thursday, back next Monday.



If I add a via point of Sheffield you then get this (entirely incorrect) 'not a permitted route' message, and still no fares found:



If instead I put a via point of Birmingham it suddenly finds all manner of available trains to sell me a ticket for, but insists on charging the 'London' fare rather than the cheaper 'not London' fare even for journeys that are not via London (such as the one suggested below, should be £109.70).



What an utter load of nonsense.

 

[bakerstreet]

Another great success for the new National Rail website. It, err, can't find any trains with available fares *whatever* for a Cambridge to Liverpool return, out on Thursday, back next Monday.

View attachment 155096

If I add a via point of Sheffield you then get this (entirely incorrect) 'not a permitted route' message, and still no fares found:

View attachment 155097

If instead I put a via point of Birmingham it suddenly finds all manner of available trains to sell me a ticket for, but insists on charging the 'London' fare rather than the cheaper 'not London' fare even for journeys that are not via London (such as the one suggested below, should be £109.70).

View attachment 155100

What an utter load of nonsense.

The ‘this is not a permitted route’ message - which never used to be part of the previous iteration - now often appears for routes which TOC and other sites are happy to sell tickets for. It’s very misleading and the site is acting like a member of staff with a poor attitude

This is supposed to be the industry’s official product to advise on fares, routes and restrictions.

For it to be so poor and so misleading is appalling.

We now have no real official source of such important information

 

[AdamWW]

The ‘this is not a permitted route’ message - which never used to be part of the previous iteration - now often appears for routes which TOC and other sites are happy to sell tickets for. It’s very misleading and the site is acting like a member of staff with a poor attitude

This is supposed to be the industry’s official product to advise on fares, routes and restrictions.

For it to be so poor and so misleading is appalling.

We now have no real official source of such important information

I suppose the good news is that most people use the Trainline as if it were the official source...

 

[Bletchleyite]

I suppose the good news is that most people use the Trainline as if it were the official source...

In all seriousness I've started doing that. Don't need to pay them anything to do so! After all the original NRE codebase was I believe a fork of the Trainline code (it certainly used to display in the same grid format).

(I'm still annoyed I now don't have a clean record for not paying them any fees, because of having erroneously bought a ticket for the wrong day a while back!)

 

[MrJeeves]

In all seriousness I've started doing that. Don't need to pay them anything to do so! After all the original NRE codebase was I believe a fork of the Trainline code (it certainly used to display in the same grid format).

TTL won a contract to supply the NRE journey planner and fares engine in 2002, but they soon switched over to a consortium of companies including Thales who ran (and still run, I believe?) a lot of the information systems including Darwin (at least judging by the code and documentation).

Quite an interesting history of rail retail on f17: https://www.f17.co.uk/blog/25-years-of-online-rail-retail/foreword

An early casualty was National Rail Enquiries (NRE). In late 2002 thetrainline had beaten competition from Qjump to win a long-term contract to provide the journey planning and fares part of the National Rail Enquiries website. However, faced with growing demands from its stakeholders, NRE had become frustrated with the slow pace of delivering enhancements and new features. It decided to commission a consortium led by Thales (who already provided live train information) to build a replacement site. There was a long-term contract with thetrainline, but it was non-exclusive and volume based. NRE chose not to challenge the contract, but simply to put no volume through it.

 

[Bletchleyite]

TTL won a contract to supply the NRE journey planner and fares engine in 2002, but they soon switched over to a consortium of companies including Thales who ran (and still run, I believe?) a lot of the information systems including Darwin (at least judging by the code and documentation).

Quite an interesting history of rail retail on f17: https://www.f17.co.uk/blog/25-years-of-online-rail-retail/foreword

Interesting, so the Thales version was a complete ground-up replacement and not just a continuation of the Trainline fork? They did that quite well, it wasn't apparent that there had been a change if I recall.

 

[MrJeeves]

Interesting, so the Thales version was a complete ground-up replacement and not just a continuation of the Trainline fork? They did that quite well, it wasn't apparent that there had been a change if I recall.

Perhaps, like how the Darwin IP is all owned by RDG while being developed by Thales, it was the same with Trainline's initial implementation, and this was handed over to Thales to wrap the frontend around their own API instead? Completely guessing.