New NRES website

[emoaconr]

Is it ironic that they have the BR arrow symbol emblazoned over the picture of the barge... for it was the railways which killed off the canal system?

Just noticed it seems to be hell of a lot easier to include railcards now, and the "via" option can more easily be selected. On the whole, an improvement, but I'd like to see a couple of things from the old site included in this version.

 

[the sniper]

I'm still getting a broken version of the old style live departure board...

 

[Greenback]

It doesn't appear to be working properly yet. I clicked to download a map of Cardiff and the Valleys and got Birmingham!

 

[MCR247]

I'm still getting a broken version of the old style live departure board...

Same here

 

[merlodlliw]

The new site is in general much better, on the old site station info was
always confusing, opening times & staffing levels usually made no sense to the travelling public.

However station info now is improved, but full of errors, my station WRX does not even show VT use the station with its services.

I wonder how many other stations on the nat rail site,need adjustment. This morning the opening page on all stations info was
one second before jumping to another page

 

[thefab444]

However station info now is improved, but full of errors, my station WRX does not even show VT use the station with its services.

Why are you complaining, I thought that was your ultimate goal?

 

[Max]

Just to point out, I've merged a duplicate thread with the original discussion.

 

[harz99]

The new site is in general much better, on the old site station info was
always confusing, opening times & staffing levels usually made no sense to the travelling public.

However station info now is improved, but full of errors, my station WRX does not even show VT use the station with its services.

I wonder how many other stations on the nat rail site,need adjustment. This morning the opening page on all stations info was
one second before jumping to another page

Talk about contradict yourself! How does "much better" and "improved" square with "full of errors" and "needs adjustment" then?

The new site is still very much untested cr*p, unless anyone else knows better..................

 

[Trains06]

I quite agree... Still no new LDB

 

[harz99]

Just found another bug.

Using the journey planner and living where I do in Stranraer I often use the "first train and last train" faciltyfor day trips.

Now if there is a time shown in the other columns (and the system auto gives the current time) it throws up a "return must be later day/time than outward" type query even when dates are the same ignoring the fact that I want first/last details, which is nonsense and not what the old system used to come up with.

 

[BlythPower]

They still haven't got the Rangers and Rovers page (tickets, not football!) working yet...

 

[SWT Driver]

Don't bother with the mobile version either, it's just as bad.

I've tried it on my Nokia 5800 and I've tried it with Opera Mini, Opera Mobile 10, Nokia's own browser and if you select certain items it puts blue text on a blue background! Duh!

About as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike!

 

[David Pemberton]

Does anyone know what has happened to the advanced journey planner?

I used to be able to generate a pocket timetable for NOT to STP & KGX which included where a change at EMD or GRA would be practical/quicker than the obvious service.

e.g. 1625 STP-DBY change at EMD, or 1630 KGX-NCL change at GRA - both of which were better than the 1630 STP-NOT

The advanced journey planner was a bit fiddly and probably didn't get much use so I can see that it might have been dropped from the new website, which IMHO confuses the intelligence of simplicity with the dumbing-down of simplistic.

 

[merlodlliw]

Talk about contradict yourself! How does "much better" and "improved" square with "full of errors" and "needs adjustment" then?

The new site is still very much untested cr*p, unless anyone else knows better..................

It is easier to read, that's an improvement. when you read the old site and looked at station staffing, unless it was a terminus, it was impossible to
understand.

Anyhow back to VT, passenger focus tell me,ATW left VT out of its timetable
number one for the second year, no one in Cardiff bothered to check AGAIN
so the information was left out of NR station info, ATW also failed to inform NR of W/S using Ruabon/Chirk/Gobowen or even Shrewsbury stations.

Hence in my opinion the site is much easier to read(ONLY), it is ATW who dont understand attention to detail, according to ATW the 0700 WRX VT to Euston and the 1810 EUS HHD&WRX VT splitter becoming 2021 VT CTR to WRX don't exist.

 

[andylloyd]

The site seems a lot crisper however there is still the odd bug about.
Am not over keen on the New LDB, preferred the staff version before the user details changed

 

[MCR247]

I'm still getting the old one!

 

[the sniper]

I'm still getting the old one!

Yep, I'm still getting a broken version of the old one too...

 

[Ticket Man]

the new site allthough more pleasing to the eye than the old one is rubbish. its got one of the dodgy floating boxes that no matter how far you scrolll away from it always manages to get in your way, its slower than the old one and i cant access a mobile version of it. so when i use my phone to try and check times, a big website that can slow even the most caperble of pc's brings my phone to a grinding halt at which point it waves a white flag and resets itself. its progress dont you know!

 

[CCF23]

Despite looking more appealing than the old one i hate the new one. For example when i eventually found the section for rover and special offer tickets, i wanted to find the price of a Ffestiniog Round Robin it never showed the price. The new version seems slower, the old one was simple but basic this version is flashy but complicated. Is there any way to use the old one still ? If not i take it I'll get used to it until it changes again and i complain obce more. (Reminds me of Facebook whenever they change the layout)


Also they have changed the 'Ask Lisa' person

 

[the sniper]

For example when i eventually found the section for rover and special offer tickets, i wanted to find the price of a Ffestiniog Round Robin it never showed the price.

Last time I looked it seemed a lot/most didn't show the price. :-x

 

[David Pemberton]

Seems to have been down/overloaded for much of today. Did anyone check if it could cope with servicing a high volume of enquiries at crucial times as well as generating all the Teletuby-like graphics and adverts.

It's stupidly simplistic rather than intelligently simple.

 

[jopsuk]

It's been awful since about mid afternoon yesterday. Occasionally a page will load, but it's a slow, slow process. All I want is the LDB for my station for the way home. Is that too much to ask? I even have it bookmarked so it's all I'm loading.

 

[jon0844]

Every time there's something that makes it more vital to check the site, it goes down because of demand. Rather ironic isn't it!

Other websites in the early 2000s used to have this problem, but the web has come a long way and it's now possible to cope with huge demand at irregular intervals.

National Rail hasn't managed to keep up, new look site or not, by the sounds of it.

Every time it happens, the argument is that it would be too expensive to buy all that extra bandwidth for a few days of problems - the same argument as to why councils don't get enough grit to put on the roads.

I don't buy these arguments, especially when balancing loads and coping with demand is something that can be dealt with fairly easily by people that know what they're doing.

 

[142094]

I'm not a computer whizz like some people may be on the site, but surely there is some way of adding extra servers or whatever at peak demand times?

Taking electric supply as an example, say during the world cup or something. When it is half time how many people in the country get up to make tea or whatever? And what happens? The HEP plants in Wales and Scotland come online to provide electricity for the grid. Then when demand is lower, they use the cheaper electricity to reverse the cycle and take the water back into the reservoirs ready for the next time.

 

[jon0844]

Yes, it is possible to cope with short periods of high demand. Since websites like the BBC, Sky, CNN etc all went down when anything big happened, you'll see that they now remain online - and can still show the full site, with multimedia content etc.

But, there is a cost and I sometimes get the feeling that some sites are happy to just buy cheap hosting and not worry about infrequent downtime.

Not only should the sites be able to stay up, but there shouldn't be the need to replace a whole site with a static page giving minimal info.

 

[142094]

I guess the problem is exacerbated as people keep refreshing the page or loading new windows. Still you'd think that important sites such as National Rail would still be there.

 

[jopsuk]

On the hand, the pared down home page that you get if you do manage to get on is fantastic! Why can't the page permanently be like that?

 

[jon0844]

I wouldn't say fantastic, but it is better.

I think the site really fails to make an impression on me. It looks too much like a third party site that you wouldn't entirely trust as being up to date and accurate, with you wondering where the proper site was!

 

[Skimble19]

I think that once they have ironed all the bugs out it could be a good site, it's certainly more appealing to the eye than the old one, now they just need to get the content back to the old standards and it will be fine.

 

[SWT Driver]

If you want to lodge a complaint about the abysmal standards on the site & are cheesed off with getting the bog-standard reply email, then try firing an email off to one of these instead.


Chris Scoggins (CEO); [email protected]
Jason Webb; Head of Online Services; [email protected]
Jason Durk; Head of Passenger Information; [email protected]

You might get somewhere, then again you might not; And with the useless nature of the new site it's more likely to be the latter.