The National Rail Enquiries service was established in June 1996 as a direct result of the privatisation process. As part of this process around 60 smaller Telephone Enquiry Bureaus were replaced by a local rate, nationally available single number, providing train times, fares, and service disruption information on behalf of the Train Operating Companies (TOCs). National Rail Enquiries answered around 24 million calls last year, using two suppliers.

Since the inception of National Rail Enquiries, the service provided to our customers has changed significantly both in terms of the quality of service provided, and the availability of information through a variety of new mediums, the most significant of these being the development of the National Rail Enquiries website.

The growth in use of the website has been exceptional, with over 80% of all customer contacts now made self service channels.

National Rail Enquiries Website

This website provides a comprehensive suite of services including:

• Online Journey Planner, with season ticket calculator, pocket timetable, and seamless links to on-line ticket retailers.
• Live Departure Boards, where customers can obtain a real time indication of the arrivals and departures at any of 2500 National Rail stations.
• Service disruption information, providing real time details of train service disruption across the National Rail network, planned and short notice alterations and engineering works
• Lisa, state of the art virtual assistant that helps users with information about their journey or with National Rail Enquiries website.
• PDA and WAP versions of the journey planner and Live Departure Boards.
• Products and Promotions.
• Stations Information.
• How to get to places of interest by rail.

Self Service Channels

National Rail Enquiries currently provides the following services on self-service channels:

Live Departure Boards Vista Gadget

This is a desktop gadget for the Microsoft Vista operating system and allows users an at a glance view of the latest train running information for a particular train station or direct journey.

TrainTracker™: 0871 200 4950

This is an interactive voice recognition service where customers can access live arrival/departure board information over the phone.

In summary TrainTracker™:

• uses speech recognition which allows the caller to say what they want
• looks up estimated train times and delivers these to the caller
• callers can request specific stations and times or ask for the next departure

At times of rail service disruption, demand can be higher than predicted and callers can end up in a queue. TrainTracker™ is designed to provide a quick, alternative means for the provision of updated direct train running times.

TrainTracker™ uses state of the art speech recognition allowing callers to obtain information by making a phone call and asking questions, simply saying what train they want.

TrainTracker™ is useful for callers who require train time predictions for trains.

TrainTracker™ Text: 8 49 50

TrainTracker™ Text provides the same information as the TrainTracker™ service over SMS.

After sending a text message from your mobile with your required station to TrainTracker™ Text the service will send you a reply containing arrival and/or departure information for that station.

For example:
- text your station name to 8 49 50 to receive details of all the next departures
- text ‘arr’ followed by your station name to receive details of all arrivals to that station

View a list of further enquiry options and their responses.

Your message sent to 8 49 50 will cost the normal text message rate charged by your operator.
Our reply to you will cost 25p including VAT, and will be charged to you by your operator.
You are only charged for replies containing departure/arrival information. You will not be charged for error messages.

TextMe Journey Planner

A service which sends journey details obtained from an Online Journey Planner query straight to customers' mobile phones. It is currently available on the O2, Orange and Vodafone networks.

TextMe Journey Planner sends customers a complete itinerary for either the outward or return portion of your journey (or both), without having to write them down or print them out.

Customers search for a journey on the National Rail Enquiries Website, and after entering their mobile number are sent their selected journey by text, each text message costing 25p for a single journey or 50p for a return (including VAT).

For more details on any of these services please visit the National Rail Enquiries website.

© Association of Train Operating Companies 2008.