new nationalrail.co.uk website

locotoledo

There is a new nationalrail.co.uk website

Its a lot clearer than the old one

There is a "cheapest fare finder"

What do you think of it?




interest declared: locotoledo is a director of national rail enquiries!

catieeb06

If you don't mind me being totally honest, it looks rather amateurish.

I much preferred the older one.

I was looking at it to try and find some prices and I really do think I will be returning to the trainline despite their booking fee!

KeithP

Catieeb06, avoid the trainline's fees by using any Train Operating Company's website.

Maybe East Coast Trains, or Southern Railway.

Livingthedream

locotoledo please explain why I shouldn't Press the Spam Button............

To late Spam reported

dave1973_2

I use rail travel almost every day and find the new National Rail website is absolute rubbish. It doesn't even give the cheapest fare any more as claimed by locotoledo.
I booked yesterday on the East Cost site to go from Penrith to Peterborough. for £21.45 with a railcard. The cheapest shown on the NR site was £42.90. What a way of increasing revenue.
It has also messed up the www traintimes org uk site. I only hope and pray that East Coast don't go down the same path. The East Coast site (taken over from NXEC ) is excellent

Stompa

catieeb06 wrote: »

If you don't mind me being totally honest, it looks rather amateurish.

I agree. The old one looked a bit primitive, but the layout of this new one is just a mess.

whatmichaelsays

In truth, it looks like a free Wordpress theme has been downloaded and handed in as a GSCE Media project.

The layout is a mess, there seems to have been little thought gone into usability (if the cheapest fare finder is the main selling feature, why is it hidden between the two most prominent parts of the site?). There is inconsistent use of fonts, too many colour clashes and an overloading of information - there is far too much on the front page that is trying to say "Click me, I'm important!"

Clicking on the "Station Name" text box should blank the box and allow me to type - at the moment I have to highlight and delete the existing text (that's in Firefox at least). Why is the "Today" box asking me to type things in without asking for a particular format? I'm guessing that if I type "Ash Wednesday" or "Pancake Day" in there then it won't work so why doesn't the calendar appear automatically when I click that text bar (rather than the calendar icon next to it)?

And the ads!!! If I want a credit card or a bottle of Actimel, I'm capable of looking for them myself. If I'm on the National Rail website, its a safe assumption that I'm not looking for those things.

In other words, a typical public sector botch job.

lfc321

Safari complains about an invalid certificate

Far too laden with flash which is a pain for anyone on a slow connection

The 'ask Lisa' feature would be a nice idea, but I can hardly find anything that she actually knows. 90% of the time you just get a standard response and then she says she's loading the journey planner (which never appears, at least it doesnt on Safari)

lfc321

Interestingly on 'Ask Lisa' it seems she only answers properly if you don't ask her about trains.

If you ask perfectly reasonable things like:

"what time is the next train from telford to shrewsbury?"
"how long does it take to get from birmingham to crewe?"
"when is the last train from london to milton keynes?"
"how much is an anytime ticket from glasgow to edinburgh"#
"can you get from london to edinburgh and back in one day?"

she just gives a standard response (usually telling you to look at the journey planner, which is on the same page that I was on when I asked her - gee, thanks).

But you can get her to interact with you if you ask her questions like:

"Do you actually know anything?"
"Are you single?"
"I like your smile"
"Do you dye your hair?"
"How old are you?"
"Do you have any children?"
"When is your birthday?"

So I guess the AI technology does work, she just doesn't know much about trains. A bit of a shame that, since it's a website about trains.

ems76

This new website is very frustrating if you want to find the stations en route to your destination. It shows a road map with the rail line highlighted but its not easy to see all the stations involved & there is no timing of the different stretches of your journey.
This makes it very difficult to try 'split ticketing' to reduce the cost of your journey.
I presume they have done this on purpose?

I will be using the Transport Direct website in future & then book with the Train Operator.

hopefulfooluk

You can no longer use the site to look up live arrivals for a station and then click through to the train to check on its progress. I used to use this all the time when onboard a long train to get live updates on when we were going to stop where - so I could tell the person at the other end if we were running late or whatever. Can't do that now.

RUBBISH!!!