Inter-city rail schedules and trip planners.
What's This?

DB European Rail

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
mobile.bahn.de (xhtml-mp)

A powerful trip planner for European inter-city rail. Hosted by the German national rail system (Die Bahn) this site, available in English and German, can be used to plan trips between virtually any 2 cities, towns or villages in most of Europe.


Screenshots:

DB Bahn Homepage DB Bahn Trip Page


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National Rail (UK)

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
m.nationalrail.co.uk (HTML5)
wap.nationalrail.co.uk/ (wml)

Live departure and arrival information and timetable lookup for inter-city trains in Great Britain.


What's This?

thetrainline (UK)

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
m.thetrainline.com (xhtml-mp)

Check train times and fares for any UK intercity train. Buy tickets by calling a (sadly not click to call) number.


What's This?

Accessible UK Timetables

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
m.traintimes.org.uk/ (xhtml-mp)

A streamlined alternate interface to the official National Rail Enquiries train timetable site, with no requirement for cookies or JavaScript. An iPhone optimized version is also available at i.traintimes.org.uk/


What's This?

Cross Country Trains

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
m.crosscountrytrains.co.uk/ (xhtml-mp)

U.K. intercity rail information from Cross Country  Trains which operates in Britain, Wales and Scotland.  The site has schedules, live service updates, information about each station including a map and directory of services and amenities and click to call phone numbers. Registered users can purchase train tickets on the mobile site. Source: @microflash


What's This?

Amtrak

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
m.amtrak.com (HTML5)

If you go to amtrak.com with a mobile browser you will be redirected to this transcoded by Usablenet version of the Amtrak PC site. Schedules and Train Status are available and you can view your reservations and even book travel on the site if you have registered with your credit card on the Amtrak PC site.


What's This?

NS - Netherlands

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
mobile.ns.nl/planner.action (xhtml-mp)

Travel planner and live departure times for the Dutch intercity rail system, Nederlandse Spoorwegen. Trip listings show transfers, intermediate stops and list departure and interchange platform numbers.


What's This?

Thalys

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
thalys.mobi (xhtml-mp/wml)
 Thalys.mobi Image Thalys International, which provides high speed rail service between Brussels, Amsterdam, Cologne and Paris, now has a mobile site, thalys.mobi.

The mobile edition offers schedule and fare lookups and contact numbers. The two main functions, Schedules and Fares are very similar and use a "wizard" interface. On the first screen you choose your start point from a drop down and click Next. A second screen prompts for destination station and for travel date and time which both default to current. Results are on a third screen. The wizard interface is intuitive and works well for this sort of data entry.

Unfortunately. Thalys.mobi has a couple of completely unnecessary and annoying usability issues.

  • To find the price of your trip you have to select the start and end stations all over again. There really should be a link to the prices right on the schedule result page.
  • On of my pet peeves is also found of Thalys.mobi. All the phone numbers on the "Buying" page are just text rather than click to call links! Are they deliberately trying to make it hard to call their reservation numbers?
I am pleased that Thalys is promoting their mobile site with a banner ad on the front page of the Thalys.com PC site. So many major web sites now have mobile editions but don't promote or link to them forcing users to search.
What's This?

Erik's Rail News

Content: **  Usability: XXXX
eriksrailnews.com/wap.wml (wml)

Railroad industry news from around the world. Hasn't been updated since 2007.

 


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Ratings Key :

Content - 0-5 *'s indicating the quality of the site's writing, depth, timeliness and accuracy.

Usability - 0-5 X's indicating the usability of the site on a mobile device, based on ease and intuitivness of navigation and lack of excessive scrolling through ads etc. to reach main content.