National timetable

RAIL Fares and Services Expert BARRY DOE presents his twice-yearly guide to the National Rail Timetable… but notes that passengers should be aware of the NRT’s lack of accuracy and failure to acknowledge temporary closures

Fares and Services Expert BARRY DOE presents his guide to the May 2016 National Rail Timetable.

At first I thought that perhaps there had been radical change to the May 2016 National Rail Timetable (NRT), after recent successive disastrous editions. Its first file, which the NRT calls ‘Commercial Information’, has been revamped and its 51 pages reduced to just 14. Gone are the operator pages, to be replaced by just brief contact details, and gone is the ‘What’s New’ section - no bad thing, as it was always poorly presented and only showed what a few operators had bothered saying.

However, as soon as I started to look in detail, it became obvious that little had changed by way of accuracy. In December I criticised the NRT for still referring throughout to First Great Western, three months after the change to Great Western Railway. Well, there is still no mention of GWR, eight months after launch!

Then, going through the tables, we see that the NRT team doesn’t know that the SettleCarlisle Line is blocked north of Appleby, or that buses are running between Dover and Folkestone, or that trains are still running to and from Glasgow despite Queen Street High Level being temporarily shut.

I confess I was concerned, after my explanation in RAIL 799’s The Fare Dealer, as to why Middleton Press was to cease printing the NRT, instead swapping to the British pages of the ex-Thomas Cook European Timetable.

Was there a chance the NRT management would really insist on its team doing the job properly this time, and leaving the proverbial egg on my face? Well, going through only vindicated the decision.

How is it that although the NRT files were late this time (only appearing a week before launch), the Middleton Press version came out in print earlier, yet without the errors? It shows what a professional team can do.

Turning to the Index, in December 2015 I criticised the NRT for having radically changed the tables for Southern services (at the behest of the operator), yet still showing all the old numbers in the Index.

It’s astounding to see that all those errors remain! As a reminder of the important ones, Table 182 (London-Horsham via Dorking) is now Table 180, Table 184 (East Grinstead/ Uckfield) is now Table 182, and Table 188 (MidSussex and Brighton-Southampton) is now Table 186.

Quite a few shipping links have disappeared, even though they remain in the Index. The

MARK PIKE. South West Trains will run from Waterloo to Weymouth on summer Saturdays via Yeovil Junction and Yeovil Pen Mill. It will be the first time these services have used the Yeovil Pen Mill to Dorchester West route. On January 23 2015, SWT 444012 passes...