NRS - National Reservation service speed and trainline speed

[julieandjack]

Hey there. To purchase advance tickets trainline has to check NRS for availability before they show it to customers on their website. How is it so fast compared to other websites? NRS is apparently supposed to be very slow but the trainline website manages to search NRS for many tickets in less than a second

 

[Roast Veg]

I doubt you'll get a definitive answer to this question unless someone who develops the trainline website happens to browse this forum, however I can make a few assumptions that may help.

The trainline website almost certainly has its own ticket database, which it periodically updates with new information from the reservation service - it can do this all day, and make many requests at once to populate the database. This means it can access the information much quicker than if it had to make individual requests to the NRS.