Railboard - National Rail

Description of App

Powered by National Rail Enquiries, Railboard is the best app for National Rail train times and platform numbers. Plus, you can save lots of money by finding super-cheap split train tickets on the app. With Split Tickets, our clever algorithms find combinations of tickets that together offer the same journey but at a lower price than a regular ticket. This is done by splitting regular train tickets at calling points along the journey. So instead of one ticket from A to C, you have two tickets from A to B and B to C. However, you stay on the same train as normal. There is no requirement to alight and re-board. And we do all the hard work to find them for you! But that’s not all; Railboard has tons of other features: ● No booking fees. ● Instant etickets, which you can add to Apple Wallet. ● Buy with Apple Pay. ● Supports Dark Mode. ● Set your railcard to get railcard discounts. ● Easily request refunds using an online form inside the app. ● Receipts available inside the app. ● An easy button to add journeys to your calendar. ● You can optionally toggle off seeing ticket prices. ● You can choose to see only direct trains. ● National Rail departure and arrival boards. ● Official National Rail platform numbers. ● Clear disruption, delay, and cancellation notices. ● Pin trains and journeys for easy access later on. ● You can save route searches for quick access. ● Optional settings, so you can customise Railboard to how you like it. Railboard is rated Excellent on Trustpilot! www.trustpilot.com/review/railboard.com We’re always working on improving your experience with Railboard. If there are any new features you want, please let us know by emailing hello@railboard.com

Version

5.19

Free or Paid

Free

Apple Watch Support

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

iPad

iOS Version

17.1.1

Accessibility Comments

It seems as though all aspects of the app are accessible for VoiceOver. I have been able to add routes, plan journeys, and purchase tickets independently, using VO.

Actions such as pinning trains are available through rota actions — flicking vertically on the desired train.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads all page elements.

Button Labeling

All buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver and is easy to navigate and use.

Other Comments

Having contacted the developer, it seems as though a significant amount of work has been dedicated to ensuring that Railboard is VO-accessible. Obviously, this is very encouraging. The developer also seems very happy to take feedback and suggestions onboard.

When first using the app, the purpose of some of the tabs along the bottom could be confusing for some, particularly the “Routes”, “Pinned”, and “Live Trains” tabs. However, these are very clearly explained through the help documentation, located in the app’s menu. This can be opened via a button on the top right of the app.

Essentially, “Routes” is like a favourites screen. You can add preferred individual trains, as well as multipart journeys, for easy access at a later point. For example, you could have the direct route from London Victoria to Brighton, and the journey from Liverpool Lime Street to Bristol Demple Meads.

The “Pinned” tab is for pinning individual trains, for a specific time. For example, if you always take the 08:18 from Leicester to Birmingham New Street, you could pin that train for easy access.

The “Live Trains” tab enables you to view direct trains between desired stations. For example, upcoming trains from London Paddington to Exeter St David’s. Trains found here can be pinned or saved as routes.

I don’t believe the above issues to be specific to VO; rather, I think any new user would need to work out the intended purpose of the tabs. As I say, the help documentation offers very good explanations.

App Store Link

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/railboard-national-rail/id1278747705

Developer's Website

https://www.railboard.com

Recommendations

1 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by Rainmaker23 1 year ago

Options

Comments

which country

which country is this for?

UK

Hi.

Just to clarify, this is for the UK. It’s for planning journeys and purchasing train tickets for UK National Rail.

Cheers.

This is great but.

As a blind person,, why would I want to buy a ticket when i can use my fredom pass?

I understand this goes outside of just London, but it doesn't seam very useful for blind people inside of it, or do fredom passes only go so far?

Outside

I don’t personally have a freedom pass, as I don’t live near London. So for me, and other blind or visually impaired people who live outside of London, Railboard could be useful.

Also, don’t freedom passes only work at certain times?

Not Just for Tickets

Another thing … this isn’t just for purchasing tickets; you can also use it for planning journeys.

You can actually turn off the ticket process, essentially turning the app into a free journey planner.

Oh, right.

I forgot others existed for a moment, that's awesome you can do that.

Fredom passes work at from 9 till, wwell, i'm not sure, it's a bit odd.

Freedom passes

Goodness me, Brad, that was the most Londoncentric comment I've ever read! Your freedom pass is valid throughout the day - you're thinking of the pensioners' freedom passes which have time limits. But your freedom pass does has geographical limits - to the north-west, for example, you can only go as far as Potter's Bar on it. To the north-east, only as far as, I think, Harold Wood, whoever he is. Don't try using it beyond its geographical limits and claiming ignorance - I can't stand folk who try and pull off wheezes like that when it's a privilege to have a freedom pass in the first place.

This app looks really, really good. I personally have used TheTrainLine up until this point to buy tickets and stuff, but I've had accessibility issues with that for a while now. Voiceover focus, for example, tends to have trouble in that app at times, plus they've got rid of their next train home feature, which used to be really handy. Are there any other advantages of this app over TheTrainLine? In any event I'm definitely going to check it out.

You're completely correct.

I was thinking of that fredom pass.

And yes, that was a very Londoncentric comment, I need to remind myself there's more than London out there. I'd really not mind going back to hereford again... Perhaps one day I will.

Other Possible Reasons

So … One of the things I like is that there are no booking fees; TrainLine still currently has these.

Another thing is the split tickets function. Although TrainLine does offer this, I’ve found that Railboard’s algorithm offers more savings; I believe it uses the train split.com platform, and earns commission. Even without splitting tickets, I was able to save a couple of quid on a ticket bought through Railboard when compared to the same ticket on TrainLine.

Railboard also supports Dark Mode; to my knowledge, TrainLine doesn’t at the moment. Of course, this is only relevant to people who have an amount of light perception. I do, so it’s great for me.

Lastly, I guess I’m just happy to try and support a developer who has demonstrated a desire to make an app accessible. He doesn’t offer an in app purchase to remove ads or access premium features, so buying my train tickets seems like the best way to offer support.

Undoubtedly, TrainLine does have some features not found in Railboard. One of my favourites was the button which detected the train on which you’re currently travelling, and opened its corresponding screen. Also, it offers more than just UK train tickets nowadays; coach tickets are available, maybe even European travel.

Railboard is obviously a much smaller business than TrainLine; I don’t think they’ve been offering train ticket purchasing for very long. Before that, it was simply a free journey planner. As it hopefully becomes bigger, perhaps some additional features will be included. I’d personally love the implementation of push notifications and live activities — maybe an Apple Watch companion app. But this stuff will presumably take time and resources to implement; I’m speaking as someone who has no knowledge of coding. Based on my correspondences with the developer, he is really keen to add new features and enhance the functionality of Railboard when it becomes viable to do so.

I personally felt comfortable in deleting my TrainLine account, and removing the app from my devices. But there’s obviously no reason why they can’t coexist; use both, and see which works best.

Also, Bingo, is your display name based on the character from Jeeves and Wooster? I’ve been listening to the audiobook, read by Stephen Fry. Tremendous listen☺️.

My username

rainmaker, yes, my display name is in hommage to the great bingo Little from Jeeves and Wooster! Congratulations on being the first applevis user to ask me that, although I daresay others might have made the connection and kept quiet about it.

You give excellent reasons to support railboard. I will use it for my tickets to cambridge next thursday.

Jeeves and Wooster!.

I need to check out the audiobooks,, I'll try youtube.

The app seams very good, if I need one for trains; I'll probably use it.

Blandings castle

I personally think it's close, but the blandings novels are better. Heavy Weather is just comic genius! Good job railboard wasn't around then or else some of the scenarios in those books would have been more difficult for the great PG to carry off.

re:Jeeves and Wooster!.

I don't think the books are my kind of thing but I can understand why people like them.

I can't delete my comment.

I can't delete my comment so instead, here's a fact: in the UK we don't have nearly as many braille signs as in the US.

It's off topic I know but I didn't know what else to do and my last comment was silly in my oppinion.

A limitation in this app

There is a very important limitation to this app at present. it's particularly important to we blindies. Essentially, this app will not offer you mobile tickets on routes where mobile tickets are nevertheless available. I went from Potter's Bar to cambridge, return journey, last Thursday. I did this on split tickets. Railboard said mobile tickets were not available. Trainline, however, provided mobile tickets for this route. This is a pretty killer limitation for me, I have to admit. Mobile tickets have made life so much easier - I don't have to worry about asking the assistance chaps to help me buy or collect my tickets. So just be aware if you're using this app and it says mobile tickets aren't available, it might not be telling you the whole truth.