Digital replacement for 'Departure Sheets'?

[rmpbedford]

Hi there,

I've been reading back over the various messages which mention the recent demise of 'departure sheets' at stations, those large, printed posters which had alphabetical lists of stations served by direct trains. Sadly, it looks like these are not coming back after COVID, although I would be very happy to be corrected on this.

Personally, I have found that I really miss these sheets. They were fantastic as a means of imagining and planning interesting rail trips, for instance to stations only served by direct train once or twice per week, or perhaps only at a particular time of the day. One could also use them to come up with less obvious interchanges on longer journeys.

I wondered if anyone knew of a way to recreate this kind information layout in a digital form? Can one use Real Time Trains or some other service to achieve a similar result, i.e. a list of all directly served stations for a given station, broken down by day and time? Or is there some medium where one can search out minimal levels of service, i.e. by ranking routes by their frequency?

Many thanks!
Ross

 

[Ken H]

Hi there,

I've been reading back over the various messages which mention the recent demise of 'departure sheets' at stations, those large, printed posters which had alphabetical lists of stations served by direct trains. Sadly, it looks like these are not coming back after COVID, although I would be very happy to be corrected on this.

Personally, I have found that I really miss these sheets. They were fantastic as a means of imagining and planning interesting rail trips, for instance to stations only served by direct train once or twice per week, or perhaps only at a particular time of the day. One could also use them to come up with less obvious interchanges on longer journeys.

I wondered if anyone knew of a way to recreate this kind information layout in a digital form? Can one use Real Time Trains or some other service to achieve a similar result, i.e. a list of all directly served stations for a given station, broken down by day and time? Or is there some medium where one can search out minimal levels of service, i.e. by ranking routes by their frequency?

Many thanks!
Ross

Before the alphabetical ones, they used to have a list of departures and the stops. For a big station like Leeds it was a huge poster. Imperial size? Also there was a yellow one with arrivals. They were stuck up in frames side by side.
They also had the departures on a big roller thing that was moved up when necessary. It was in the middle of the concourse.
I think each region had their own style.

 

[janb]

My station still has them, probably depends on the TOC/stability of service in that location.

Live Departures does it https://live-departures.info/rail/timetable/

 

[Western 52]

My station still has them, probably depends on the TOC/stability of service in that location.

Live Departures does it https://live-departures.info/rail/timetable/

That's a great website, many thanks for sharing the link.

 

[rmpbedford]

This is outstanding! Thanks so much for that. What a great service. This deserves to be better known.
Thanks again

 

[Flying Snail]

The usefulness of these posters was ruined when connections were removed, leaving only direct trains.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Some still do show journey opportunities involving connections. I happened to be on the Windermere branch earlier this week.

Well done to Northern for this aspect at least.

 

[Horizon22]

They normally exist, but are often placed in rather obscure parts of the station, especially at larger ones.

At smaller stations they are usually visible near the entrance at most of the stations I’ve used in London & SE.

 

[Route115?]

You can use RTT. Use the detailed version.

Realtime Trains | Search

Realtime Trains is an independent source of live realtime running information for the Great British railway network.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

The selectins are:

All Day
The date you wish to travel
Put the destination station in 'Subsequently'
Select 'Passenger calls' in the Service type box

You can filter by TOC if you wish. Please note that this will only show through trains.

If you want to include connections the Swiss SBB site is quite good and includes National Rail stations:

Connection | SBB

www.sbb.ch

Not having posters is a right pain if you want the time of return trains for later when then are not shown on the electronic boards. Thee is also the assumption that everyone has a smart phone - I don't and many elderly people don't. You can plan a journey beforehand, changing it en route is next to impossible without a smart phone.

 

[Bevan Price]

You can download the National Rail Timetable to a computer; if you have a printer, you can print copies of any pages of particular interest:

Electronic national rail timetable - Network Rail

The electronic National Rail Timetable (eNRT) is a long-term timetable for planners that covers services on the national rail network.

www.networkrail.co.uk

 

[Taunton]

Not having posters is a right pain if you want the time of return trains for later when then are not shown on the electronic boards. Thee is also the assumption that everyone has a smart phone - I don't and many elderly people don't. You can plan a journey beforehand, changing it en route is next to impossible without a smart phone.

I am quite competent with a smart phone, but find when I need train times it takes (and wastes) many multiples of my own time to get to the information rather than just glancing at the departure sheets in a station when walking past. All the logging on and navigating via the little keyboard to the right section, which often has been so minimised as to need tedious working through, just takes too much time.

 

[rmpbedford]

Many thanks everyone - there are some fantastic suggestions here.

 

[Fyldeboy]

Back in the day, my team produced the departure sheets (the connection ones) for what's now GWR in the South Wales area. The software was on a 5¼" floppy disc (remember those) and it took forever to edit and produce the posters. I'm sure in the c21 it is much easier to produce them, but 20 years ago, only one member of my team was able to produce them.

 

[BrianB]

The software to produce these A-Z Departure sheets is still there, it's just that having lost the obligation to produce them during COVID, few TOCs want to bring them back for cost reasons. Northern, GWR and Chiltern are at least 3 TOCs that do continue to produce them, and will be doing so for December. They are not difficult to do as long as there is a will to have them. I will be starting the GWR ones in about a months time and these will continue to include connections as always. Note that A-Zs are normally only produced for stations serving multiple routes, all other times what is called a Line of Route poster will be produced instead, showing everything in table format inc the return direction

 

[AY1975]

The software to produce these A-Z Departure sheets is still there, it's just that having lost the obligation to produce them during COVID, few TOCs want to bring them back for cost reasons. Northern, GWR and Chiltern are at least 3 TOCs that do continue to produce them, and will be doing so for December. They are not difficult to do as long as there is a will to have them. I will be starting the GWR ones in about a months time and these will continue to include connections as always. Note that A-Zs are normally only produced for stations serving multiple routes

How many such stations managed by these TOCs still have them, though? I noticed recently that Gloucester still has them, but that's the only place I've seen them at any time since Covid.

And with such frequent service changes in recent years, do the TOCs issue new ones every time there's a timetable change? I guess that's part of the reason for not doing them anymore.