Here's a free travel tip: next time you want to plan a train journey, use the Deutsche Bahn website. Seriously. Even if you're travelling entirely in the UK. It is more accurate than the National Rail enquiries website, as I discovered when planning a journey from London to Northallerton today. the British website suggested we take a train leaving 5 minutes before our Eurostar arrived, or offered the attractive option of waiting in the station until early the next morning. I had a sneaking suspicion that even in the UK trains leave the capital more than twice a day. A quick look on the DB site showed one running about an hour after we arrived. I called National Rail Enquiries with some trepidation (In Germany I call helplines as a last resort: they take ages to pick up the phone, operators are frequently unpleasant and unhelpful, and they charge premium rates) But the person on the other end was very friendly and confirmed this train was running. Perhaps they use DB too. I'm told British station staff often do.
This being the brave new world of the privatised rail network, National Rail Enquiries couldn't reserve a seat so I was connected to the train operating company help desk and I had a nice chat with 'Norman', who was very apologetic but said to reserve seats with a Britrail pass like the one we are travelling with, you have to go to London Kings Cross ticket office in person. Now call me awkward if you will, but this seems an odd requirement for a ticket which is not available to residents of the UK.
Norman was as helpful as he could be, and suggested we go to coaches 'G' and 'H', because of there is space it will usually be there, and that we talk to the conductor to find where there are some free seats.
So it seems that UK officialdom (as represented by the NR website and rules) is its usual haphazard self, but the people on the end of the phone are friendly and efficient. It will be interesting to see how this works over the three weeks of fairly extensive train travel while we are in the UK.
3 comments:
I'd be careful about using the DBahn site for UK train times. Not only does Nationalrail.co.uk site give the information you've blogged about, but NXEC's (the train operator in question) own website states that the train you mention comes in 5 minutes later than what DBahn advise.
So whilst DBahn says the train in to York gets in at 23:12, both NRE and NXEC state that it actually gets in at 23:17. As a result neither site will give you a time an onward connection to Northallerton, as the station interchange time (the average time it takes you to get from one platform to another and another thing DBahn doesn't look at) is 8 minutes as there is no onward connection after this time (23:25).
Another thing to be wary of when using DBahn, is that that the site doesn't follow something called the routeing guide. So people may end up being charged extra on the train by a guard, thanks to being sent the wrong way around the houses by DBahn.
Thanks for the tip- I guess it's as much to do with my lack of familiarity with the NRE site that I couldn't get a sensible answer out of it.
I have had problems with the DB site before: last time we were in the UK it failed to take into account the mass cancellations that were caused by rail renewals. With this in mind I checked the connection with the NRE Helpline.
I wasn't aware DB don't use the routing guide, but that isn't a major problem for us as we are using a Britrail Pass, which is valid by time rather than Geography. I'm also used to it telling me interchange times, and thought it did that in the UK as well. I'll have to check.
Nonetheless, the DB timetable is still reccomended in the railway press -and used by British station staff- as the best way to find connections throughout Europe.
BTW, I'm intrigued: you clearly know a lot about the system, but the only 'hit' I had for the time you were online is from the US. Are you a Brit in the US, or an American with a keen interest in the UK rail scene?
Hi, I posted that comment from a 3G network in the UK.
In answer to your other question - I do enough travelling by train to have acquired an unhealthy interest in these things ;o)
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