Northern's Check My Timetable tool a complete mess

[TUC]

The Halifax Courier, presumably using information supplied by Northern, has run a Facebook news article on changes to Northern's Calder Valley services. It doesn't lend itself to posting a link, but the text is as follows:

'New rail timetable coming next month - changes to the Calder Valley line

More services are set to stop at Sowerby Bridge, Mytholmroyd and Low Moor.

Trains in Calderdale will switch to a new timetable next month.
Northern says the majority of its services are largely unaffected, but some have been re-timed and there are a handful of service changes.

Rail users can check what the new timetable means for them and their local station using the ‘Check My Timetable’ feature on the Northern website: northernrailway.co.uk/checkmytimetable. '

On using this tool and entering Sowerby Bridge in the search bar, the results include statements such as:

'Train times will change from Sunday 10 December' and;

'There will be fewer trains from the 2nd June' (In contrast to the 'more services' message in the Halifax Courier article.)

It then sets out changes to individual journeys which appear to be a jumble of service changes between 2021 and next year. For example,


Destination station:Chester
Departs at 06:23
was 06:22
Arrives at 08:09
Duration 1h 46m
was 1h 47m
Service is changing from Nov 25


Destination station:Chester
Departs at 06:23
was 06:22
Arrives at 08:09
Duration 1h 46m
was 1h 47m
Service is changing from Jun 24

Destination station:Chester
Departs at 06:23
was 06:22
Arrives at 08:09
Duration 1h 46m
was 1h 47m
Service is changing from Jul 22

Destination station:Chester
Departs at 06:23
was 06:22
Arrives at 08:09
Duration 1h 46m
was 1h 47m
Service is changing from Oct 21

Check my train timetable

Northern | Buy Cheap Train Tickets and Check Train Times

www.northernrailway.co.uk

What on earth has happened?

 

[MetroPleb]

Yes, it seems garbage data. I just checked Patricroft, and it tells me that the 17:39 to Liverpool and the 17:39 to Liverpool are being withdrawn, but the 17:39 to Liverpool will still run, so it concludes that there will be "2 fewer services"



More... Saturday's is even worse, where it is claiming new services running from June even though they are the same services that are already timetabled and running now.

This is a data tool made up by a programmer that doesn't understand railway data, still in "Alpha", which no one has bothered to test. It is total garbage.

 

[Stephen42]

It's nearly working as intended, but is highlighting very minor changes to the schedules midway through timetable periods. For the 05:43 Leeds to Chester service, from the start of the timetable change until 21st June it arrives at Manchester Victoria at 07:02. 24th June till 19th July that arrival time changes by one minute to 07:03. It's then back to arriving at 07:02 from 22nd July to 18th October and finally from 21st October onwards changing again to 07:03.

I expect some of the other mid-timetable period changes might have exposed a bug in how it's counting services being added or removed - it's rare to have so many different permanent schedules in the same period.

From their sitemap they have two very similar pages, it's possible their ads were meant to point to https://www.northernrailway.co.uk/timetable-change which looks targeted at June 2024.

 

[TUC]

It's nearly working as intended, but is highlighting very minor changes to the schedules midway through timetable periods. For the 05:43 Leeds to Chester service, from the start of the timetable change until 21st June it arrives at Manchester Victoria at 07:02. 24th June till 19th July that arrival time changes by one minute to 07:03. It's then back to arriving at 07:02 from 22nd July to 18th October and finally from 21st October onwards changing again to 07:03.

I expect some of the other mid-timetable period changes might have exposed a bug in how it's counting services being added or removed - it's rare to have so many different permanent schedules in the same period.

From their sitemap they have two very similar pages, it's possible their ads were meant to point to https://www.northernrailway.co.uk/timetable-change which looks targeted at June 2024.

That link still produces the same errors.

 

[Stephen42]

That link still produces the same errors.

The underlying component that shows the timetable change is the same, but the content around changes in the timetable and the date are correct on that one.

Aside from the "Withdrawn", the rest looks broadly correct with the 06:23 service appearing multiple times as there are very subtly different permanent timetables at various points. The services that are marked as withdrawn are in error possibly as there are multiple permanent schedules before the timetable change.

 

[TUC]

The underlying component that shows the timetable change is the same, but the content around changes in the timetable and the date are correct on that one.

Aside from the "Withdrawn", the rest looks broadly correct with the 06:23 service appearing multiple times as there are very subtly different permanent timetables at various points. The services that are marked as withdrawn are in error possibly as there are multiple permanent schedules before the timetable change.

But it still makes it totally unclear communication for passengers uninterested in the nuances of multiple timetable changes.

 

[Adam Williams]

This web application is awful for more reasons than have been outlined above:

• The links aren't links, you can't open service information in a new tab
• Service details open in what feels like a new page (and the list of services disappears) but you can't use the browser back button to navigate back to the list
• There's no obvious way to edit a search, you have to re-enter the origin station again if you want to swap from Monday to Friday to Saturday timetables
• There's whatever this UI element is supposed to do: