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Why is the National Rail Enquiries website so unreliable?

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sprunt

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I've just tried to check the departure status from my local station, and as I so often am, I was presented with this:

Screenshot from 2019-09-05 11-39-05.png

This happens several times a week. I appreciate that no website is up all the time, but this is just frustratingly common. The live departures information seems to be unavailable for any station at the moment. For such a fundamental part of an enquiries system, this should surely be much more robust?
 
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RichT54

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It's not just the National Rail Enquiries site itself that's affected, but also the phone apps that rely on National Rail for their data.
 

Surreytraveller

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Probably some kid with a diploma but no knowledge or experience of real life pushed the wrong button somewhere.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
 

Roast Veg

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It has been very unreliable in the past - I'd argue this is a case of "it was broken, now we've proven it".
 

Clip

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Probably some kid with a diploma but no knowledge or experience of real life pushed the wrong button somewhere.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Thats a bit of a silly statement, unless of course you knew there was nothing wrong with the site and no patches were needed for something or other?
 

TheGarner

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Are you surprised? The iOS app looks like it was originally made when the iPhone first came out and hasn't been adapted for the later models at all.
 

DynamicSpirit

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As far as I can tell, it's basically a rubbish website. I get that 'there's been a problem' page quite often. It also has an occasional habit of producing daft or non-existent fares for journeys (a couple of days ago, it quoted me £99 to buy a return ticket from Lostock Hall to Lancaster! With hindsight, I now regret not getting a screenshot of that). These days, I use it for rough-and-ready checks about whether a journey I'm planning will work or what time the last train home is etc., but I don't think I'd ever trust it to actually buy any tickets).
 

Surreytraveller

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Thats a bit of a silly statement, unless of course you knew there was nothing wrong with the site and no patches were needed for something or other?
Fair enough, it is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but there is a pattern of people with bits of paper coming into the workplace knowing exactly how to run it, then a year later we say to them 'we told you so'.
 

al78

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Thats a bit of a silly statement, unless of course you knew there was nothing wrong with the site and no patches were needed for something or other?

It is the typical stereotypical chip-on-shoulder statement made by people who have decided for some reason they don't like those belonging to some out group (system administrators, software engineers in this case). Often the people who complain about IT problems exhibit the same sort of ignorance as passengers who complain about delays.
 

Surreytraveller

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It is the typical stereotypical chip-on-shoulder statement made by people who have decided for some reason they don't like those belonging to some out group (system administrators, software engineers in this case). Often the people who complain about IT problems exhibit the same sort of ignorance as passengers who complain about delays.
Or perhaps its the software engineers, system administrators etc that are ignorant, as they are not the end users. I haven't got a chip on my shoulder - I've seen it time and time again. Just let them get on with it and not learn from their mistakes because they're not around long enough to see their mistakes.
 

Roast Veg

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Fair enough, it is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but there is a pattern of people with bits of paper coming into the workplace knowing exactly how to run it, then a year later we say to them 'we told you so'.
There's also a pattern of old hands with "years of experience" expecting new members of staff to maintain the atrocious codebase they spent a lifetime carefully arranging without disturbing its atrocious flaws!
 

RichT54

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Before I retired I was a software engineer/system developer. One of the main trends over several years has been companies aggressively reducing IT head-count. Often, the first to go will be the more experienced people who know how the system works, because they are typically on higher salaries. The remaining staff are then put under increasing pressure to get changes made as rapidly as possible and thus code may not get tested as thoroughly as it should. I don't know if that is what happened here, but it is a problem in many organisations.
 

Surreytraveller

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Before I retired I was a software engineer/system developer. One of the main trends over several years has been companies aggressively reducing IT head-count. Often, the first to go will be the more experienced people who know how the system works, because they are typically on higher salaries. The remaining staff are then put under increasing pressure to get changes made as rapidly as possible and thus code may not get tested as thoroughly as it should. I don't know if that is what happened here, but it is a problem in many organisations.
Exactly. This is the problem.
 

duncanp

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Before I retired I was a software engineer/system developer. One of the main trends over several years has been companies aggressively reducing IT head-count. Often, the first to go will be the more experienced people who know how the system works, because they are typically on higher salaries. The remaining staff are then put under increasing pressure to get changes made as rapidly as possible and thus code may not get tested as thoroughly as it should. I don't know if that is what happened here, but it is a problem in many organisations.

Oh, you are so right with your analysis there.

I was a software tester before I was made redundant earlier this year, and you wouldn't believe the politics that goes on in an IT project.

The current buzzword is "juniorisation" , where experienced staffers replaced by lower paid staff who don't have the requisite knowledge.

It takes time to get to know an IT system well, and management don't seem to realise this.

When I did find defects during testing, the response was usually something like "..the users aren't supposed to do that.."
 

Surreytraveller

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Oh, you are so right with your analysis there.

I was a software tester before I was made redundant earlier this year, and you wouldn't believe the politics that goes on in an IT project.

The current buzzword is "juniorisation" , where experienced staffers replaced by lower paid staff who don't have the requisite knowledge.

It takes time to get to know an IT system well, and management don't seem to realise this.

When I did find defects during testing, the response was usually something like "..the users aren't supposed to do that.."
Its the same in all industries. That's the problem with employing managers from the outside who haven't worked their way up.
 

trainophile

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Thought it was just me. Trying to check live trains this morning, and all I kept getting was "you appear to be offline", which was odd because all the other websites I had open were working fine.

Another thing is that it sometimes freezes when I want to search for trains A-B, with the rotating thing on the screen (of my iPhone), and won't do anything until I have shut down the phone and booted it up again. I am getting fed up with the number of times this happens. Obviously very rubbish software.
 

greaterwest

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The Rail Delivery Group are to blame for this one - as they are the ones who specified the "Darwin" system which powers NRE, and so many other live departure boards (including apps), Darwin also links these to alterations made by TOC CIS operators, so all information should be the same (a cancelled train on TOC CIS screens should match the app, etc)

They performed a major update last night which caused Darwin to break, hence the issue people have been experiencing today.

I believe it was fixed mid afternoon after they rolled back to the previous non-broken version.

Read more about Darwin here, https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/100296.aspx
 

RealTrains07

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Always seems to be some sort of technical error on the app

On the liver departures page they often seem to not mention why some services are delayed or cancelled even though on others they have

I know its a minor thing but it is irritating as you do get trains disrupted by multiple instances at once
 

LMS 4F

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When I try and use it as I am putting in my choices it keeps switching to another page or scrolling down from where I am inputting my choices. It has done this for many years.
 

trainophile

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Working okay today, but giving puzzling information. Just checking on live trains for Salford Crescent to Man Picc for the 1336 today (Blackpool North to Hazel Grove).

The front screen shows all okay “on time” but on the detailed page which shows all the stops it is headed “this train has been cancelled due to a broken down train earlier today”. Then the detailed info shows cancelled from BPN to PRE, where it resumes its timetable.

Presumably it is running from PRE as scheduled, but the blanket “this train is cancelled” doesn’t inspire confidence and is confusing.

We need to get that one from SLD for our connection at MAN so I hope my assumption is correct.

Fair enough if I had queried BPN to wherever, but surely the info should read “cancelled between BPN and PRE”, not just “cancelled”.
 

LAX54

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Probably some kid with a diploma but no knowledge or experience of real life pushed the wrong button somewhere.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.


The ' If it aint broke.....'' The Railway uses TOPS, this dates right back to the 70s and I remember big green screens and if really lucky connected to a dot matrix printer we still use the same program today, and as far as most Railway staff go, still thinks it's the best computer program around, can knock spots off newer upstarts ! )as with all things PC it can be let down by naff inputs of the human kind)
 

whhistle

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The problem wasn't with National Rail website per se.

The release of Darwin 4.1 on Wednesday the 4th of September was to improve GPS data.

Turns out something messed up during the release, so knocked out real time running information for everywhere. Any information from 21:00 on the Wednesday may not have been up to date.

05:03: Suppliers alerted that no live information was being presented on journey planners or mobile applications.
06:30: Suppliers continuing analysis and monitoring.
08:30: Cross party call arranged for 08:45. Further communication to be sent after this meeting.
09:15: Decision reached to roll back to Darwin v4.0. Estimated timeframe - 1 hour.
10:34: Final phase of rollback being completed. Estimated time for completion - 30 mins.
11:49: Users advised to disconnect (if they have connected) to Darwin as information still unable to display.
12:54: Darwin v4.0 restored.

Other services may have come back online earlier or users (TOCs) may have had their own way of updating services.


Factoid: Darwin is a system that takes real time data about trains from a bunch of sources and pushes it out to everywhere - all mobile apps, websites (inc National rail) and CIS screens. The drive was to ensure data (how late a train is for example) is consistent between online and the station screens.
 

greaterwest

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The problem wasn't with National Rail website per se.

The release of Darwin 4.1 on Wednesday the 4th of September was to improve GPS data.

Turns out something messed up during the release, so knocked out real time running information for everywhere. Any information from 21:00 on the Wednesday may not have been up to date.

05:03: Suppliers alerted that no live information was being presented on journey planners or mobile applications.
06:30: Suppliers continuing analysis and monitoring.
08:30: Cross party call arranged for 08:45. Further communication to be sent after this meeting.
09:15: Decision reached to roll back to Darwin v4.0. Estimated timeframe - 1 hour.
10:34: Final phase of rollback being completed. Estimated time for completion - 30 mins.
11:49: Users advised to disconnect (if they have connected) to Darwin as information still unable to display.
12:54: Darwin v4.0 restored.

Other services may have come back online earlier or users (TOCs) may have had their own way of updating services.


Factoid: Darwin is a system that takes real time data about trains from a bunch of sources and pushes it out to everywhere - all mobile apps, websites (inc National rail) and CIS screens. The drive was to ensure data (how late a train is for example) is consistent between online and the station screens.
You explained it far better than I did, thanks for that.

Seems to be okay now. Thanks for explaining. Presume still back on the old system, so hope it continues to function if they try again.
SWR remained disconnected from Darwin all weekend I believe.
 
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