National Rail Enquiries Scheme

Franchised and quasi-franchised TOCs, along with open access operators, have a licence condition mandating them to participate in an arrangement for handling telephone enquiries about rail services. They discharge that commitment by joining this particular scheme but over the past few years the activities managed at ATOC by the National Rail Enquiries (“NRE”) team have changed. From a purely telephone enquiry service at the outset the business has moved to a situation where the majority of enquiries (over 90% in fact) are handled by the web-based service. In addition to the main website, the NRE team manage other automated enquiry services, such as TrainTracker. This is an ATOC business which is constantly evolving new and more sophisticated enquiry channels in order to keep pace with developments in the communications sector. The NRE team ensure that whatever channel is used by passengers to secure information about services, fares, disruption or miscellaneous issues, the systems are in place to offer a consistent message and that this applies whether that message is communicated by NRE channels or by others (such as those holding a licence to use NRE data).