The prototype software seems to have made it into production at Colchester. Not sure if or when we'll see it roll out more widely.
It's broken all of my S&B muscle memory, but things change, and people should adapt! Overall, it appears to work pretty well, but there's certainly some things to fix and improve.
The UI isn't "journey planning first" like some others, but it does appear to find fares to sell
by planning a journey and seeing what through tickets are valid across the itineries it finds. This could be an issue during engineering works, for example, if easements are not created correctly, or even just in service disruption.
For a local-to-me example, it may not be possible to buy "Thameslink Only" tickets during a Brighton to London blockade where the buses are actually encoded in the data as being operated by Southern as journey planners won't be able to validate the route. Before, this was fine as you could buy them at one of the dumb TVMs, but now that appears like it may not be possible.
Impressively, it handles SailRail well, at least for journeys it's possible to otherwise buy online. Somewhat ironically, the Stena Line & GA Dutchflyer tickets are not available on the TVM as these can still only be purchased via Stena Line directly.
It also has a fairly nice itinerary view, but I'm not sure the car icon is the right choice for Transfers. In my opinion, it should also be clearer that Transfers are at the customer's own expense, and are not covered by the ticket itself. I'm also not a fan of it saying "Train" with the departure time below it. I think it would be much easier to read if the order of those were reversed.
The journey planning feature at the bottom-right lets you pick dates and times of travel and see various itineraries. You can also add a via or avoid location, too. Trouble is, the list of stations for via/avoid appears to include some less helpful locations, such as "London Travelcard Zones 1-6" and also things like junctions and depots!
And no, if you choose those, it will just fail to find any journeys.
When buying an "open return ticket", it seems to state you can travel back with this ticket any time today, but doesn't state the full validity period of the ticket anywhere? Also, it never shows you the ticket's route until it's printed and in your hands, which isn't ideal!
In the first image below, it's showing the Anytime Return VIA SALISBURY:
https://www.brfares.com/!faredetail?orig=ASH&dest=TAU&rte=618&tkt=SOR
Between these photos, I pressed "Show return trains", chose a date of the next day, and added a Railcard, hence the price changes.
In the pictures below, it is a 16-25 Discounted Off-peak Return VIA SALISBURY:
https://www.brfares.com/!faredetail?orig=ASH&dest=TAU&rte=618&tkt=SVR
The "restricted ticket" wording is a little confusing, but it's referring to the time restrictions rather than you needing permission to buy the ticket. And no, it doesn't mention the ticket route here either.
Finally, doing a slightly silly journey search from Clapham Junction to Euston made me realise that nowhere does it actually say what ticket you're buying
at all! The heading text in the blue bar before checkout is actually the
journey being made, so if you're using the journey planning feature of the machine there seems to be no way to know what you're paying for until you've spent your money.
Below seems to be an Anytime Day Single to London Underground Zones 1-2, but I only know that because I just spent 5 mins on BRFares trying to find something that matches the cost! I get the idea of trying to abstract away the details of the tickets when planning a journey, but surely you have to tell someone what they're actually buying at
some point.
