More from Barry Doe

In Rail 696, Barry highlights three sites of interest to those of us who like to delve a little deeper into the intricacies of the railway system in the UK...

BR Fares offers the chance to look up any rail fares in Great Britain without having to specify the trains on which to travel. It would appear to use the fare system as prescribed by the Rail Settlement Plan Ltd, a division of ATOC, but it is using the information 'under the fair use provisions of US Copyright Law', and is based in the US. Interestingly, the domain has been registered through a Proxy company to protect the identity of the person(s) behind the site... Similar information is available through the Avantix CD-ROM though of course this off-line resource costs £10.81

Putting in Birmingham Stations to London Terminals produces the fascinating result that although Chiltern 'We don't do First Class' Railways hasn't any First Class fares on its High Wycombe route, it does offer a First Class Season ticket still! At a cost of £270, it means that only 2 days Business Zone return travel over 7 days is required to break even, and, of course, you can travel on CrossCountry First Class between Banbury and Birmingham should you wish.

www.trains.im offers 'open national train times' updated weekly from Network Rail and ATOC (National Rail) datasets. Offering only direct train times for the forthcoming 11 weeks, it does have the intriguing features of showing the Working Timetable as well as the Public Timetable, and giving the mileages along the route.

Open Train Times is a site by Peter Hicks which uses the open data from Network Rail and ATOC to allow searches by location and train identifier. Shows the effect of planned engineering works on train running.

Interestingly, both Open Data sites indicate that Chiltern plan their timetables using the Clubman services whether or not a Clubman is being used. Thus the Silver Set services show no mention of the Business Zone nor the on-board catering...