Reviewed:
24th January 1997
By:
Ruth Jenkins
I used to have access to 'Journey Planner' until I moved job, and then I missed it terribly. So I was very pleased to discover that Railtrack are now including a timetable service on their Webpages. 'Timetables On-line' has the added benefit that the information is updated twice a week, so that the journey details are more likely to take account of engineering work (although Railtrack still recommend checking by phone).
Screenshot of Railtrack timetable On-line
There is a simple form to fill in details of your starting and destination stations, and when you plan to travel. You can also specify whether you want to go via a particular station, but, as with Journey Planner, I feel that it would be more useful to specify 'Not via London' or 'Not via Doncaster' as tickets often do.
The route which then best fits your criteria in the shortest journey time is then presented in an easy to read table. Unlike Journey Planner, only one journey table is shown at once, and sometimes the fastest route can be the fiddliest. However, there are 'earlier journey' and 'later journey' buttons, so you can browse through the other possibilities.
Despite a few minor faults this is a very useful service.
Reviewed by: Ruth Jenkins, Subject Librarian,
Birmingham University,
Email:
jenkinr@bham.ac.uk
Material on this page is copyright Ariadne/original authors. This article last updated/links checked on 27-Jan-1997