Update to National Rail Enquiries disruption page

Benjwri · 5 Sep 2026

It seems that NRE have updated both the app and website’s disruption pages with, in my opinion, a massive downgrade. They have sucked all of the colour of the page, and mixed up the planned and unplanned disruption, but also the finished disruption. The rebrand in itself is quite annoying, as it makes the page a lot less information dense, and less obvious what each item is.

However I think there are some really unforgivable things here. Firstly major disruption no longer has a banner across the website, no matter what page you are on. It is also no longer at the top of the disruption list, nor marked in red to make it obvious what it is.

They have also made it so you have to scroll to the bottom of the page, past every piece of disruption and engineering today, to find the link to look at planned engineering in the future.

Screenshot showing new page on National Rail app, disruptions in plain blue and planned engineering in middle with no obvious sorted order.

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DelW · 5 Sep 2026

I agree. I was trying to use it earlier to confirm details of tomorrow's closure on the southern Portsmouth Direct, and I gave up in disgust. Items seem to be arranged randomly, it needs far too much scrolling to move through the list, and I couldn't find a workable search function that narrowed them down. It's pretty much useless in its current form.

styles · 5 Sep 2026

I haven't regarded the National Rail website as a serious journey planning tool for about a decade to be honest.

If you search for train tickets on a search engine you're most likely to end up at Trainline to be honest, who, while I'm not their biggest fan, at least have a semi-functional interface.

Maybe GBR will magically fix this, but frankly I doubt it.

Benjwri · 5 Sep 2026

styles said:
I haven't regarded the National Rail website as a serious journey planning tool for about a decade to be honest.

If you search for train tickets on a search engine you're most likely to end up at Trainline to be honest, who, while I'm not their biggest fan, at least have a semi-functional interface.

Maybe GBR will magically fix this, but frankly I doubt it.

Journey planning absolutely, but this is viewing disruptions and engineering, which there aren't many great alternatives too. Not to mention I've found staff often will only accept the official site when showing them acceptance etc that they claim doesn't exist.

rmHawk765 · 5 Sep 2026

Is disruption information even publicly available through an API? I don't think I've seen any third-party alternative to NRE for the same type of disruption information.

MrJeeves · 5 Sep 2026

rmHawk765 said:
Is disruption information even publicly available through an API?

Yes, it is.

Intercity_225 · 5 Sep 2026

MrJeeves said:
Yes, it is.

How come there isn't a proper alternative to NRE yet then? It'd be really helpful as it seems NRE is becoming more and more useless by the year..

Adam Williams · 5 Sep 2026

I think Trainline have a frontend for at least some of the data

rmHawk765 · 5 Sep 2026

MrJeeves said:
Yes, it is.

Guess I'll get to work... to be fair I was already planning an app to display alternative routes in disruption in a no-enthusiast-knowledge-required way but it would be a lot easier to simply make a better NRE disruption page first.

py_megapixel · 5 Sep 2026

It's also really poor that NRE - which is not only the face of Britain's railways to prospective passengers, but also the place you are supposed to go if you are an existing passenger needing information in disruption - has a load of tacky third-party banner ads all over the place.

If I came across NRE and didn't know any better, I would question whether I had even found the official site, or some sort of scam site.

Electrostar387 · 5 Sep 2026

Intercity_225 said:
How come there isn't a proper alternative to NRE yet then? It'd be really helpful as it seems NRE is becoming more and more useless by the year..

For iOS, have been using Railboard for a while now (recommended on here) and it's been great. Shows disruption info more clearly in my opinion than the NRE app (Railboard's running data is pulled from NRE, and will link to the NRE website for disruption info, but at least the summary is more clearly displayed).

cheekybifta · 5 Sep 2026

So first TfW take away journeycheck and tell us to use NRE, which was already much worse, and now that's got worse too.

Is there really no alternative source to see what was the journeycheck data for current disruptions?

brad465 · 5 Sep 2026

National Rail are masters in ens**ttification, behind Meta apps and Twitter.

Ralph Ayres · 5 Sep 2026

One big improvement I can see is that you seem to get to the detail far more easily; the previous version involved several clicks each of which revealed only slightly more information on a particular issue. On the other hand for problems affecting multiple operators it perhaps then goes into too much detail too quickly without a useful summary; looking for instance at the current problems out of Paddington, I've had to scroll through endless info about alternative transport for the Lizzie line before getting to anything at all about GWR services, and even after reading it I'm not clear if some of their trains are running or it's a total blockage.
Not putting Major Disruption items at the top by default (I had to switch from View by date to View by category) seems illogical.

bcarmicle · 5 Sep 2026

DelW said:
Items seem to be arranged randomly

I think it's ordered so that the most recently updated disruption information is at the top, which is unhelpful given that I imagine planned engineering will have been posted weeks ago and then not updated, and sit below new incidents that have been closed off (given that there are a few Incident Resolved and Lines Reopened statuses mixed it, they've not thought to push those to the bottom).

Horizon22 · 5 Sep 2026

bcarmicle said:
I think it's ordered so that the most recently updated disruption information is at the top, which is unhelpful given that I imagine planned engineering will have been posted weeks ago and then not updated, and sit below new incidents that have been closed off (given that there are a few Incident Resolved and Lines Reopened statuses mixed it, they've not thought to push those to the bottom).

I think it’s fine to do that, or at least do so for the relevant date/time not the most recent update time. But this should only be for routes which are not in “major disruption”, as these should be pinned to the top.

Benjwri · 5 Sep 2026

Ralph Ayres said:
One big improvement I can see is that you seem to get to the detail far more easily; the previous version involved several clicks each of which revealed only slightly more information on a particular issue. On the other hand for problems affecting multiple operators it perhaps then goes into too much detail too quickly without a useful summary; looking for instance at the current problems out of Paddington, I've had to scroll through endless info about alternative transport for the Lizzie line before getting to anything at all about GWR services, and even after reading it I'm not clear if some of their trains are running or it's a total blockage.
Not putting Major Disruption items at the top by default (I had to switch from View by date to View by category) seems illogical.

What detail do you mean? As far as I can see the only thing it shows extra is the TOCs affected? It's still only one click into the disruption message, which is the same as before. The only difference is it's harder to find if there is a message to click on

AngusH · Sunday at 01:13

on my desktop browser there is a filter option to chose which
types of events you want to see and which operators.

Seems rather glitchy when selecting operators but did work.

I see the same icon in the image of the app. Don't know if it works the same though.

which gives this:

(Description: a user interface panel that allows filtering of operator and type of message)

DelW · Sunday at 08:30

I'd found my way to the 'select operator' page but I couldn't make it work. Having now tried again, in a calmer mood, I have succeeded, but it's quite unintuitive.

* Access to this screen is via "Settings" button - I'd suggest that would be better titled something like "Select what to display" to make it more obvious what settings are available.

* By default, all the operators are ticked. This time I have spotted that the first box is "All train operators", and that unticking that box turns all the others off, so you can select just the one you need. That "all operators" box should be made more prominent and distinctive, otherwise it looks as though you have to turn all the (30-odd) unwanted ones off individually. I'd also suggest that they should all be off by default - most people will be looking for disruption on one operator or route, not the whole country.

* When you've ticked the operator(s) you want, there's no obvious "done" or "continue" button. There's a prominent "X" (close page) in the top right, but that just takes you out of the selection process without applying your choices. The one that works is a "back" button, which I had expected to do what the X actually does, i.e. take you back out of the process unchanged. It's also top left of the screen, which is often the location for an "undo" type function. I think it needs a clearer button at the bottom or right of the screen to say "done" or "apply selections".

There is an "apply" button at the bottom of the main selection page - I think a similar button on the select operators page would be the best option.

Hopefully I'll still remember how to do this next time I need to use it, though it'll probably have been redesigned again by then.

duffield · Sunday at 08:39

AngusH said:
on my desktop browser there is a filter option to chose which
types of events you want to see and which operators.

Seems rather glitchy when selecting operators but did work.

I see the same icon in the image of the app. Don't know if it works the same though.

View attachment 211096

which gives this:

View attachment 211095

(Description: a user interface panel that allows filtering of operator and type of message)

Yes, and I've just checked that if you de-select "recently cleared" for example, close the website and come back, the setting does at least persist (which is not a given for this website, the unwanted "hotels" checkbox being an example).

But overall it's awful. It's so much more difficult to skim quickly and see if there's anything relevant, you have to slowly plod through and really focus.

speedy1 · Sunday at 08:54

They do seem quite intent on making the website worse in many ways.

The journey search has a ~500ms delay doing any input, on my Macbook Air M4, which really is quite impressive - you have to work hard at being that incompetent.

And these devs insisting on turning a website into a web app. Eg the disruption filters should also have URLs so you can link to filtered data directly. But no

Agree the advertising and booking.com thing is a disgrace too

Basically any new JavaScript thing they introduce is a mess

Starmill · Sunday at 11:54

AngusH said:
on my desktop browser there is a filter option to chose which
types of events you want to see and which operators.

Seems rather glitchy when selecting operators but did work.

I see the same icon in the image of the app. Don't know if it works the same though.

View attachment 211096

which gives this:

View attachment 211095

(Description: a user interface panel that allows filtering of operator and type of message)

For me, that apply button just won't appear so I can't press it. Very poor.

GordonT · Sunday at 16:08

I'd assumed at first that the "proper" website was down and that this hotchpotch layout was some temporary backup, but clearly from previous posts that's not the case. A complete "bodge" job.

MikeWM · Sunday at 23:19

Lovely. They've taken the one remaining section on their site that wasn't already totally rubbish, and now made that effectively unusable. It had already gone backwards at the last redesign - requiring opening each item on a separate page - but at least the list of disruptions was fairly well-presented and didn't involve scrolling down *16* screens worth of information to see all the current disruptions and engineering work, as is the case for the list right now on my desktop monitor. (The grey on white (lack of) colour scheme is about 15 years out of date in terms of website design too, the current trend is high-contrast/dark themes, which for a number of reasons (including accessibility) are mostly preferable). The amount of wasted space in this layout is astonishing - was that the design brief? 'Waste as much space as possible so people have to page down 16 times'?

Is there any other website that presents this data in a more sensible format? Then I can give up with the NRE website entirely.

DR18037 · 2026-09-11T13:30:40+0100

Benjwri said:
It seems that NRE have updated both the app and website’s disruption pages with, in my opinion, a massive downgrade. They have sucked all of the colour of the page, and mixed up the planned and unplanned disruption, but also the finished disruption. The rebrand in itself is quite annoying, as it makes the page a lot less information dense, and less obvious what each item is.

However I think there are some really unforgivable things here. Firstly major disruption no longer has a banner across the website, no matter what page you are on. It is also no longer at the top of the disruption list, nor marked in red to make it obvious what it is.

They have also made it so you have to scroll to the bottom of the page, past every piece of disruption and engineering today, to find the link to look at planned engineering in the future.

View attachment 211030

They couldnt get any worse with their information timeliness and accuracy, so they had to make the way we view the info 10x harder. What was so bad about having a summary page showing each TOCs current issues. Red for major, Yellow for a bit wrong, Green for clear? The fact this is meant to be the Nations main rail info page.

In summary, NRE info is now 45 minutes late, sometimes inaccurate, and now on an awful page. Brilliant...

GordonT · 2026-09-11T13:52:25+0100

DR18037 said:
In summary, NRE info is now 45 minutes late, sometimes inaccurate, and now on an awful page. Brilliant...

Hard enough for seasoned users of the page to be able to find disruption information on first attempt within its new incarnation let alone for a "normal" accessing the page on a rare occasion.

Update to National Rail Enquiries disruption page

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