Which ticket retail booking system / database does NRE use to decide if routes are permitted

[bakerstreet]

Been searching for a few tickets of late where around half booking engines accept the entered via points and deliver an itinerary and half reject them.

And there’s no real pattern, the same site will reject some whilst others accept and vice versa.

I know NRE does not itself sell
tickets but given that it is supposed to be an official source, what does it use to determine if a route is permitted?

Does it have its own booking engine / database software written based around the routing guide or does it use a commercial system eg Vix / Worldline / On Track / Silverail etc.

 

[Adam Williams]

does it use a commercial system

Silverail

Yes

 

[bakerstreet]

Yes

Excellent thanks @Adam Williams

 

[Haywain]

Been searching for a few tickets of late where around half booking engines accept the entered via points and deliver an itinerary and half reject them.

And there’s no real pattern, the same site will reject some whilst others accept and vice versa.

I know NRE does not itself sell
tickets but given that it is supposed to be an official source, what does it use to determine if a route is permitted?

Does it have its own booking engine / database software written based around the routing guide or does it use a commercial system eg Vix / Worldline / On Track / Silverail etc.

The problem is that the Routeing Guide is so complex and arcane that there are minor differences in interpretation that can lead to differences, such as those you have found.

 

[bakerstreet]

The problem is that the Routeing Guide is so complex and arcane that there are minor differences in interpretation that can lead to differences, such as those you have found.

Yes understood thanks.

Of course, the Guide has significantly grown in complexity during most years of privatisation and is certainly more complex than the pre privatisation ‘Any reasonable route’ of which the Guide was alleged to have codified.

 

[Haywain]

the pre privatisation ‘Any reasonable route’ of which the Guide was alleged to have codified.

Whilst the previous routeing might have been intended to be a guide, I don't believe permitted routes were ever intended to simply continue and codify what had gone before. Had that been the case there would not have been any need for a routeing guide at privatisation.

 

[bakerstreet]

Whilst the previous routeing might have been intended to be a guide, I don't believe permitted routes were ever intended to simply continue and codify what had gone before. Had that been the case there would not have been any need for a routeing guide at privatisation.

I was going by Hansard. My bold.

Mr. Trotter
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) what monitoring his Department carries our concerning the assurance given by the Government that previously acceptable rail routes would continue to be available after privatisation; and if he will make a statement about the change in the validity of Newcastle upon Tyne to London full-fare tickets for travel to Euston; [21614](2) if, for the purposes of the Government's assurance concerning continued acceptance for full-fare ticketing of routes accepted by British Rail, all routes accepted by British Rail prior to privatisation, including Newcastle to Euston, are regarded as reasonable routes. [21616]

Mr. Watts
I have been asked to reply.A routeing guide has been prepared by the Association of Train Operating Companies, which sets out clearly the permitted routes by which passengers may travel on their journeys. This guide requires the approval of the franchising director and the Rail Regulator and they will be concerned to ensure that if protects all reasonable routes that were allowed by BR before privatisation.The guide has been given interim approval for an experimental period until 31 May. At this stage it does not include Newcastle to London via Birmingham.Comments are being sought via rail users consultative committees on the accuracy and completeness of the guide. These will be taken into account before final approval is granted.I have made no assessment of the impact on business men of using single one-day tickets.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1997-03-21/debates/fdc17cf1-0976-48c8-bd8a-f7009bd47978/RailPrivatisation

 

[thedbdiboy]

Indeed, that was the main purpose of the Routeing Guide. BR set fares and was able to decree how they were valid. The initial privatisation proposals made no assumption that previous validities would be honoured, but it became one of the sticking points in getting the 1993 Railways Act through Parliament. Once it was accepted that this would be the case, it became necessary to attempt to document the routes so that the incoming TOCs could be held to them.

 

[MrJeeves]

And there’s no real pattern, the same site will reject some whilst others accept and vice versa.

I'd be interested to know of any particular examples you're running into to see why it might be the case.

 

[sheff1]

,Indeed, that was the main purpose of the Routeing Guide……….. it became necessary to attempt to document the routes so that the incoming TOCs could be held to them.

If only.

The original Routeing Guide contained 26 maps. By 2020 there were more than 350. This massive increase, accompanied by more and more ‘negative easements, has considerably diluted the original list of permitted routes.

Added to that, the now favoured journey planner based online retailers often don’t recognise routes which are still permitted and won’t sell tickets for them.

 

[MrJeeves]

Added to that, the now favoured journey planner based online retailers often don’t recognise routes which are still permitted and won’t sell tickets for them.

I'll risk sounding like an echo but I'd be interested to know of any particular examples you're running into to see why it might be the case.

 

[OscarH]

The original Routeing Guide contained 26 maps. By 2020 there were more than 350. This massive increase, accompanied by more and more ‘negative easements, has considerably diluted the original list of permitted routes

Although I dare say this would have happened even without privatisation - even a public operator would have been playing whackamole with the loopholes in the original

 

[Haywain]

Although I dare say this would have happened even without privatisation - even a public operator would have been playing whackamole with the loopholes in the original

And something would have needed to be created to deal with online ticket retailing.

 

[Adam Williams]

And something would have needed to be created to deal with online ticket retailing.

This. "Any reasonable route" is infinitely complex and cannot be objectively evaluated by software at all. The replacement has its share of problems, but at least there's an actual algorithm that is .. mostly specified, and can be followed.

 

[sheff1]

Although I dare say this would have happened even without privatisation - even a public operator would have been playing whackamole with the loopholes in the original

Possibly, but it was stated that the thinking behind the Routeing Guide was to make sure the privatised TOCs could be held to the routeing permissions pre-privatisation. Quite clearly this did not happen, even when the removed routes were longstanding and entirely reasonable.

I'll risk sounding like an echo but I'd be interested to know of any particular examples you're running into to see why it might be the case.

A key reason is the basic inability with some retailers to select the required (or in some cases any) ‘via’ or ‘avoid’ stations.

For more esoteric tickets, the examples which immediately spring to mind involve routes which I am sure would be removed if disclosed on here. Some (but all) travel planner retailers will sell the one I use most often. My second favourite used to be sold by the TOC concerned but no longer is - the last time I tried multiple retailers and none would sell it so I just bought it from the TVM (I prefered to get reservations for irrefutable evidence should the ticket be questioned - must say I am surprised it never has been).

There have been other one offs which I have ended up buying from an other than first choice retailer (once I had to buy from Trainline ) but can’t remember the exact details.

 

[thedbdiboy]

If only.

The original Routeing Guide contained 26 maps. By 2020 there were more than 350. This massive increase, accompanied by more and more ‘negative easements, has considerably diluted the original list of permitted routes.

Added to that, the now favoured journey planner based online retailers often don’t recognise routes which are still permitted and won’t sell tickets for them.

It was a manual guide, a 'quick fix' that was nt designed to cope with the advent of journey planning software and internet retailing

This. "Any reasonable route" is infinitely complex and cannot be objectively evaluated by software at all. The replacement has its share of problems, but at least there's an actual algorithm that is .. mostly specified, and can be followed.

The political issue the Routeing Guide addressed was related to getting the industry privatised. No one at Government level even thought that they were writing something in perpetuity. BR could not have continued with 'Any Reasonable' once the need for software to objectively identify routeing for ticket sales purposes emerged.

 

[sheff1]

BR could not have continued with 'Any Reasonable' once the need for software to objectively identify routeing for ticket sales purposes emerged.

There is no such "need" on a network-wide basis.

Take Sheffield to York, a very popular flow - the reasonable/permitted routes are obvious and to issue a ticket a retailer does not need to know whether the intending passenger will be travelling via Leeds, Doncaster or Pontefract (direct trains via all three). Best of all, after making passengers unnecessarily specify their routeing in both directions, the retailers who insist such information is "needed" then issue an Any Permitted ticket which can be used via routes other than the ones specified for both outward and return travel.

 

[thedbdiboy]

There is no such "need" on a network-wide basis.

Take Sheffield to York, a very popular flow - the reasonable/permitted routes are obvious and to issue a ticket a retailer does not need to know whether the intending passenger will be travelling via Leeds, Doncaster or Pontefract (direct trains via all three). Best of all, after making passengers unnecessarily specify their routeing in both directions, the retailers who insist such information is "needed" then issue an Any Permitted ticket which can be used via routes other than the ones specified for both outward and return travel.

There's no need to geographically specify the ticket but modern consumer law would require something a bit more defined than 'any reasonable'. For the customer it will depend on their needs - most will be happy to know they can use any direct train. Some may want details of the specific trains. The point is that 99% of people will look for this information on a digital device, and to enable that process to work the information needs coding.

Back in 1987 (when I joined BR) 100% of customer information was provided by staff using their training and knowledge in a completely analogue way (which frankly meant that you could ask three different members of staff and get three different answers). That simply isn't tenable in 2025.

 

[sheff1]

Back in 1987 (when I joined BR) 100% of customer information was provided by staff using their training and knowledge in a completely analogue way (which frankly meant that you could ask three different members of staff and get three different answers). That simply isn't tenable in 2025.

What you get in 2025 is three different ticket retailers with three different interpretations of ticket validity for the same ticket. You then get frontline staff who claim that the one retailer who manages to get things correct is incorrect.

As an aside, I would much rather trust the analogue training provided when I joined BR in 1972 than some of the nonense you see on TOC websites or spouted by their social media teams (human or otherwise) now.

 

[Watershed]

Back in 1987 (when I joined BR) 100% of customer information was provided by staff using their training and knowledge in a completely analogue way (which frankly meant that you could ask three different members of staff and get three different answers). That simply isn't tenable in 2025.

Except the bit in bold is still what happens a lot of the time when you ask staff! Rules and systems exist to define the validity, but staff are rarely given the necessary training to use them properly to ensure consistency.

Even with online retailers, where compliance with things like the eNRG is theoretically an accreditation requirement, you see variance in how different retailers interpret the rules as @sheff1 states. So either the rules are not clear enough if there is room for different interpretations, or the accreditation standards are not being enforced properly (in my view, it's a bit of both).

 

[ThisIsSurbiton]

There is no such "need" on a network-wide basis.

There certainly is, if you want to sell a ticket online, or indicate a route that would be valid for buying one at the station. Some algorithm is necessary. It could be as simple as shortest or direct. That would be terrible, but it would be possible to sell on that basis. Or fastest, sadly not automatically valid. Everything we have now is more reasonable than those simple rules (until negative easements arrived) and the Routeing Guide we have now is bigger because of privatisation but would have been essential without it.

The retailers are a lot closer to each other in results than the range of opinions that staff offer! Not their fault of course (except Paddington).

 

[redreni]

I don't know anything about what happened at privatisation, really. As somebody who has drafted government press lines and suggested lines for ministers, my feeling is that that ministerial question and answer quoted above from Hansard was carefully crafted to be reassuring while not quite saying what it was hoped people would read into it

It said ATOC would be concerned to permit any reasonable route that had been allowed by BR. Obviously any such route must have been reasonable in the opinion of BR, but it might not be reasonable in the opinion of ATOC, so it might not be covered by the assurance given. That answer would have been drafted with that ambiguity in mind - that'll be why it says "all reasonable routes that were allowed by BR" rather than "all routes that were allowed as reasonable by BR".

 

[thedbdiboy]

Except the bit in bold is still what happens a lot of the time when you ask staff! Rules and systems exist to define the validity, but staff are rarely given the necessary training to use them properly to ensure consistency.

Even with online retailers, where compliance with things like the eNRG is theoretically an accreditation requirement, you see variance in how different retailers interpret the rules as @sheff1 states. So either the rules are not clear enough if there is room for different interpretations, or the accreditation standards are not being enforced properly (in my view, it's a bit of both).

The reason that online Journey Planners come up with variances is indeed because the rules are not clear enough. That's because the process predates the digital age, so rather than the routeing guide specifying the coding algorithms it is a written specification that every Journey Planner provider has to write their own coding against. You can have as many accreditation tests as you like, but such an approach is never going to ensure 100% consistency across the millions of journey combinations that can be requested. It's another example of the 'year zero' approach to privatisation making no allowances for technological advances.

I don't know anything about what happened at privatisation, really. As somebody who has drafted government press lines and suggested lines for ministers, my feeling is that that ministerial question and answer quoted above from Hansard was carefully crafted to be reassuring while not quite saying what it was hoped people would read into it

It said ATOC would be concerned to permit any reasonable route that had been allowed by BR. Obviously any such route must have been reasonable in the opinion of BR, but it might not be reasonable in the opinion of ATOC, so it might not be covered by the assurance given. That answer would have been drafted with that ambiguity in mind - that'll be why it says "all reasonable routes that were allowed by BR" rather than "all routes that were allowed as reasonable by BR".

Your interpretation sums it up well. 'It will all be fine (and I'll be long gone when it turns out it isn't)' was effectively the reply to any concerns. In particular, it was somewhat disingenuous to claim that ATOC would be concerned to permit any reasonable route when for ATOC to function in such a way would have required meticulous adherence to the Governance structure coupled with effective expert oversight from OPRAF. In reality, TOCs themselves showed little interest in corporate governance for anything but those things that affected their revenue, whilst the 'great and good' that inhabited OPRAF/SRA/DFT Rail quickly lost the ability or interest to take responsibility for the evolution of the process. ATOC itself was a vassal entity - it had no decision making powers of its own unless agreed by either TOCs or Government.

 

[OscarH]

That's because the process predates the digital age, so rather than the routeing guide specifying the coding algorithms it is a written specification that every Journey Planner provider has to write their own coding against.

I wouldn't call it a problem with it being textual in the way that it is. The much bigger issue is that it's one of the most vague and ambiguous documents I've ever laid eyes on, so what people think it's trying to say their code should do varies

 

[thedbdiboy]

I wouldn't call it a problem with it being textual in the way that it is. The much bigger issue is that it's one of the most vague and ambiguous documents I've ever laid eyes on, so what people think it's trying to say their code should do varies

I wouldn't disagree. As the thread makes clear, the original document was a hastily concocted quick and dirty solution to a problem that politicians wanted to go away, and the fact that it has become immeasurably longer and more detailed since hasn't really dealt with the underlying shortcomings of the approach.

 

[mikeg]

Whilst any reasonable route was not in itself codified were there not a series of tests internally that guards, revenue etc were told to apply to determine whether a route was reasonable? I remember one being that if travel was not away from the destination AND the far from A to B and B to C was cheaper than A to C then A to C via B should be considered reasonable*. - I believe there were many more examples of such tests, many of which are perhaps forgotten or written down in some internal BR manual. This one, at least, could be done computationally but not sure whether it would have been advisable to deploy 1990s computing power on such a thing every booking query.

*Indeed had the TOCs not insisted on NFM64 fares being used in perpetuity, new permitted routes could have been created by fares changes. Given the realistic non protection of historically valid routes, something the NRG was supposed to but certain TOCs have undermined, the other problem, routes becoming invalid due to fare changes is a bit moot. Though now I'm going off at a tangent.

 

[thedbdiboy]

Whilst any reasonable route was not in itself codified were there not a series of tests internally that guards, revenue etc were told to apply to determine whether a route was reasonable? I remember one being that if travel was not away from the destination AND the far from A to B and B to C was cheaper than A to C then A to C via B should be considered reasonable*. - I believe there were many more examples of such tests, many of which are perhaps forgotten or written down in some internal BR manual. This one, at least, could be done computationally but not sure whether it would have been advisable to deploy 1990s computing power on such a thing every booking query.

*Indeed had the TOCs not insisted on NFM64 fares being used in perpetuity, new permitted routes could have been created by fares changes. Given the realistic non protection of historically valid routes, something the NRG was supposed to but certain TOCs have undermined, the other problem, routes becoming invalid due to fare changes is a bit moot. Though now I'm going off at a tangent.

The TOCs did not insist on NFM64 being used in perpetuity, they had no choice in the matter. It was designated as the base fare structure for all privatisation fares functions by OPRAF at the time. No doubt back then it was assumed it would do until something better came along, and after a few years when the initial frantic efforts to cobble together the privatisation fares arrangements had been forgotten it sort of attained mythic status.
Had there been any clear Government policy to back the decisions taken in 1995 it might have been possible to evolve them but (as this thread has emphasised) the only 'policy' was a promise to continue through ticketing the way BR had done without any idea of what was actually meant by this.