National Rail web site departures board

[whole diary]

[johoare]

I was just wondering if anyone else is having problems with the departure/arrivals board on the newly revamped NR^» (Network Rail - home page) website?

If I go into departures boards I'm given three options to fill in.. One says Arriving/departing/both.. The other two are From and To stations..

This works well if you chose departing and you put the station you're departing from in the from box..All is ok..

If you put arriving in the first box.. Then it becomes more confusing.. If you put, for example, Maidenhead in the From box (which really makes no sense...) it gives you Maidenhead departures (not arrivals).. If you put Maidenhead in the To box it gives you the same screen back again as it doesn't like it..

So my question is how do you get directly to Maidenhead arrivals, which used to work on the old version of the website...

Maybe I'm being stupid but I've tried several things and it doesn't appear to work as it used to.. seems like a step backwards to me?

[John R]

It's not just you. It's a pain - like so many other aspects of the new website.

[Timmer]

Maybe I'm being stupid but I've tried several things and it doesn't appear to work as it used to.. seems like a step backwards to me?

No Jo you are not being stupid as the NRES^▸ (National Rail Enquiry Service) chief executive confirms in his recent blog:
http://nationalrailenquiries.wordpress.com/

We^re still working through some teething problems with the site ^ there have been a number of comments, both direct to us, and on various websites highlighting problems with the placement of adverts and live departure board arrivals functionality.

Personally speaking, please can we have the old NRES website back. Not that thats anything to shout about but this new site is not good and functionality of the arrivals and departures boards and engineering work pages leave a lot to be desired.

[johoare]

Yep. I totally agree... Let's have the old site back until the new one at least has been tested (and not in a live environment  ).. I work in IT and we don't tend to put things live until at least they're as good as what they're replacing   

[paul7575]

I tried to look up engineering works for next weekend, today.

Could someone else try it and see if the system breaks in the same way?

eg the drop downs for date input reverted to 01 Jan 2009.
... the TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) whose details I was looking for disappeared from the drop down list of TOCs after I'd selected it the first time.
... the 'calendar' date entry didn't do anything at all, AFAICT^▸ (as far as I can tell).
... the 'Update' button moved around screen when clicked but otherwise didn't seem to do much.

If anyone could come up with a more 'computer savvy' description of all the faults in that section, I'd be happy to fire them off to NR^» (Network Rail - home page)...

Paul

[Phil]

I tried to look up engineering works for next weekend, today.

Could someone else try it and see if the system breaks in the same way?

eg the drop downs for date input reverted to 01 Jan 2009.
... the TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) whose details I was looking for disappeared from the drop down list of TOCs after I'd selected it the first time.
... the 'calendar' date entry didn't do anything at all, AFAICT^▸ (as far as I can tell).
... the 'Update' button moved around screen when clicked but otherwise didn't seem to do much.

If anyone could come up with a more 'computer savvy' description of all the faults in that section, I'd be happy to fire them off to NR^» (Network Rail - home page)...

Paul

Agree with all this - same happens for me under those cicumstances (I'm using Safari on an iMac)

[JayMac]

Chris Scoggins (NRES^▸ (National Rail Enquiry Service) Chief Executive) say in his blog that they are aware of the problem of adverts overlapping functional parts of the website. Why not just remove the ads until the problem is sorted?

I was initially quite favourable in my praise of the redesign, unfortunately I based my opinion on style over substance. Functionality is far worse than before. I've tried the site on a few browsers and broadband speeds and had similar experiences.

Have NRES not heard of BETA?

[Mookiemoo]

Chris Scoggins (NRES^▸ (National Rail Enquiry Service) Chief Executive) say in his blog that they are aware of the problem of adverts overlapping functional parts of the website. Why not just remove the ads until the problem is sorted?

revenue

[JayMac]

NRES^▸ (National Rail Enquiry Service) could've protected (or even enhanced advertising revenue) with a BETA test site.

[Timmer]

I tried to look up engineering works for next weekend, today.

Could someone else try it and see if the system breaks in the same way?

Yep the same thing happened to me when I tried to use it the other week and gave up. Considering that the rail travelling public are actively encouraged by the TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) and ATOC^» (Association of Train Operating Companies See - here) to use the NRES^▸ (National Rail Enquiry Service) website to obtain details of engineering work, there really should be some urgency on getting this and other crucial information parts of their website like arrivals/departures sorted out.

Going back to a point Jo made, you really do wonder how much testing was done and on how many different browsers hence my suggestion of going back to the old site whilst these bugs are fixed.

[signalandtelegraph]

Try this one, its a stripped down version of the NRES^▸ (National Rail Enquiry Service) site.

http://traintimes.org.uk/

Does not have the engineering works though but the vaguely live map is interesting.