Printed timetables have valu
MY review of the May-December National Rail Timetable (NRT) appears on pages 68-75 of this issue. There might be some readers who wonder why I’m making a fuss about the NRT’s low standards - after all, haven’t timetables been overtaken by journey planners?
Well, that’s what a lot of operators think, which is why so many put out the minimum that they are allowed to get away with - usually a mere set of folders, each covering a line or small area. Frankly, if they could abolish these as well, they would.
This is absolutely wrong, and based solely on the premise that anything modern and electronic automatically replaces anything paper and printed.
Despite my age I am far from old-fashioned. I believe email is one of the greatest inventions of my lifetime, and that Facebook and other such facilities are excellent - provided they are our servants and not our masters. The only reason I don’t use Twitter, and also decline all invitations to join ‘LinkedIn’, is that I don’t consider them to have value, not because they’re ‘modern’.
Nevertheless, I believe that the printed timetable can show at a glance things that journey planners cannot even begin to do. The human brain can assimilate a huge amount of information from one page.
Take the Far North (Table 239 in the NRT). Let’s say I have something really important to attend at Plockton - a 1200 wedding or funeral, for example. A journey planner will tell me that if I leave Euston 2115 and change at Inverness, I’ll arrive 1117. What it won’t say is what happens if the 2115 is late. What’s the next train from Inverness? And if it’s risky, what should I do instead?
The single page of Table 239 shows me that the next train is two hours later, and I’ll miss the event. So if I wish to play safe it will mean either making sure I get to Inverness for the previous train to Plockton at 1754 the evening before and then staying the night at Plockton, or make other choices such as stopping in Inverness.
Or I might arrive Inverness for the 2106 to Muir of Ord or Conon Bridge, where there are good hotels. This would then allow me to leave London on the 1200 through train from King’s Cross. From glancing at that one page, I can make decisions about which journey planners could never advise me.
Now I accept that the new Middleton timetable is not an NRT replacement. It is selective, as the content forms a mere 74 pages in a monthly 608-page tome covering all Europe. It is a guide. But Middleton is using it because it is the only professionally-produced accurate version available, so long as Network Rail is allowed to get away with publishing such an unprofessional version.
That’s why I suggest a high-level enquiry is enacted, with Network Rail made to do a professional job. NR’s apathy must not be allowed to kill the NRT.
It is interesting to contemplate that only two ‘proper’ railway timetables remain in the country - operator timetables that show all train services in a reasonable area rather than just a pocket version for one line.
That’s not to say there isn’t a place for other types. Clearly, for example, Virgin Trains East Coast needs the sort of booklet it produces, which shows just VT’s own services and the