National Rail Down

Well not the whole network, just the website. I've always hated the National Rail website, it is a shining beacon of how incompetent web design can really make the user experience appalling. It got so bad a couple of years ago that I switched to Deutsche Bahn's site, which is still pretty good and has all the UK train times. Then the UK site improved slightly, and also had a very lightweight wap portal added in, so I've put up with it for a while. Now though it's been ruined again with stupid javascript, horribly-designed graphics and unfriendly processes in some sort of revamp.



So anyway I'm on the lookout for another site.

Anyway, this prompted me to read The Register's article on the site being down, to the comments, and I came across a new and fantastic looking timetable and fare site:

http://traintimes.org.uk/

Simple, lightweight, and it has a simple logic behind it so you can get straight to the info you want. For example, if you want trains from Hull to London, you just tap in http://traintimes.org.uk/hull/london and up pops a simple page with the times and platform details if available. Want a simple timetable download? There's the pdf link. Good, eh? Append /fares to the end and you get prices too!



So no more NationalRail.co.uk nonsense for me!