The ''British Rail Passenger Timetable'', later the ''National Rail Timetable'' and now the ''Electronic National Rail Timetable'' (eNRT), is a document containing the times of all passenger rail services in

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

. It was first published by

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

in 1974.

Predecessors

1882 Bradshaws Handbook for Tourists in Great Britain and Ireland

The first combined railway timetable was produced by

George Bradshaw George Bradshaw (29 July 1800 – 6 September 1853) was an English cartographer, printer and publisher. He developed Bradshaw's Guide, a widely sold series of combined railway guides and timetables. Biography Bradshaw was born at Windsor Brid ...

in 1839. His guide assembled timetables from the many private railway companies into one book. Bradshaw's continued to be published until 1961, with demand dwindling after the grouping of the railways in 1923, as each of the new "Big Four" companies published their own comprehensive timetable. Other companies produced their own timetables, most famously the ''

ABC Rail Guide The ''ABC Rail Guide'', first published in 1853 as ''The ABC or Alphabetical Railway Guide'', was a monthly railway timetable guide to the United Kingdom that was organised on an alphabetical basis that made it easier to use than its competi ...

''.

Nationalisation

After the Big Four were brought into public ownership in 1948 to form

British Railways British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

(later British Rail), each of the six regions published their own timetable, containing details of all services in their region. After Bradshaw's ceased printing in 1961 (as it couldn't compete with the cheaper regional timetables), there was a gap of 13 years without a system-wide schedule. This changed in 1974, when British Rail launched their first nationwide timetable, costing 50p (roughly £10 in 2020) and running to 1,350 pages. The ''British Rail Passenger Timetable'' continued to be published annually until 1986, at which point it was split into summer and winter issues. It was then released twice a year until the

privatisation of British Rail The privatisation of British Rail was the process by which ownership and operation of the railways of Great Britain passed from government control into private hands. Begun in 1994, it had been completed by 1997. The deregulation of the industr ...

in 1997.

Post-privatisation

National Rail National Rail (NR) is the trading name licensed for use by the Rail Delivery Group, an unincorporated association whose membership consists of the passenger train operating companies (TOCs) of England, Scotland, and Wales. The TOCs run the p ...

(owned by the

Association of Train Operating Companies The Rail Delivery Group (RDG), previously the Association of Train Operating Companies, is the British rail industry membership body that brings together passenger and freight rail companies, Network Rail and High Speed 2. History From 24 Oc ...

) was set up to provide information about passenger services after privatisation. It continued the publication of the network-wide timetable (renamed the ''National Rail Timetable''), stopping in 2007 due to low demand.

Network Rail Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. Network Rail is an "arm's leng ...

, who produce the scheduling data, started publishing the timetable for free on their website as the ''Electronic National Rail Timetable'' (eNRT), which is still available to download as a

PDF file Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

. It continues to be updated twice a year, ahead of the main Europe-wide timetable changeover dates in mid-May and mid-December. The December 2020 update was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the volume of change on the operational timetable. The timetable continued to be published in paper format by

The Stationery Office The Stationery Office (TSO) is a British publishing company created in 1996 when the publishing arm of His Majesty's Stationery Office was privatised. It is the official publisher and the distributor for legislation, command and house papers, s ...

and Middleton Press. The Stationery Office published their last edition in 2014, and Middleton Press stopped production in 2019, by which point the hardcopy timetable cost £26 and was available by mail order only, meaning that there is no longer any means of obtaining a full printed timetable.

References

External links

Network Rail's electronic National Rail Timetable (eNRT)

Railway Museum article on the history of printed rail timetables
{{British Rail British Rail History of rail transport in Great Britain Rail transport publications Publications established in 1974 1974 establishments in the United Kingdom

Predecessors

Nationalisation

Post-privatisation

See also

References

External links