There are many international train journey planner websites such as those run by SNCB, Deutsche Bahn and ÖBB (all nationalised railways). However they all have wrong information for British trains, specifically timetable alterations for engineering work are missing (for example that on the East Coast Main Line over the Easter weekend), and that they all show a planned direct Sunderland to London service which does not exist (yet).
This is due to the British railway failing to provide updates to MERITS the central timetable database run by the International Union of Railways. Therefore all timetables of British trains provided by non-British railway companies are liable to be wrong.
At best this creates hassles for anyone planing an international train journey to, from or though Britain due to the need to check British train times against a British source. At worst they will not know they had been given wrong information until they arrive at the station to catch the train, and end up the good part of a day late or worse. Once whilst returning from London after helping in George Galloway's election campaign, I meet a French couple travelling to Hull who had fallen into this trap; although the existence of a replacement bus service between Hatfield and Stevenage had been published well in advance in Britain, they had not been informed. They stated that they would not travel on British trains again, in this case the problem was exasperated by the fact the the GNER conductors had not been given information about the Peterborough to Hull trains operated by Hull Trains.
Clearly a correct and reliable timetable is necessary to encourage people to travel by train instead of flying. This must be sorted! It seems the British railway just doesn't care.
runs on steam
I think that the national rail timetable still runs on a steam driven computer developed by George Stephenson a couple of weeks after he finished developing the Rocket locomotive. It didn't get much media coverage at the time because nobody understood why we needed a national timetable.
Have you thought about emailing either the British Tourist Board (to do something about it) or Transport 2000 (to raise awareness amongst transport activists) or drop an email to Christian Wolmar who writes on railways in The Guardian and elsewhere?
akchewally, it would be faster on steam
akchewally, it would be faster if the national rail timetable thingy WAS run on steam. it seems to be running on a small PC with a very low spec that someone is also using to play youtubes and mp3s at the same time and running 19 other murkosfot products on SIMULTANEOUSLY.
personally, i use deutschebahn IN GERMAN !
http://www.deutschebahn.de
http://www.bahn.de
Replacement buses and the replaced trains.
Trenitalia's website fails in a different way, a query for Selby to Hull on Sunday returns the replacement bus service and the trains that are replaced. They don't show any direct London to Sunderland trains.