- Our work
- National Rail Enquiries
Keeping trains on track
The challenge
The National Rail Enquiries website receives on average of four million visitors per day, using the website’s Journey Planner. The challenge included building a Journey Planner search form linked to the core internal business system that is constantly updated with timetable changes and incident information.
The solution
CDS provides hosting services which need to be resilient enough to withstand huge spikes in demand, for example on snowdays. CDS also provides an ITIL Service Desk and technical solutions for the NRE website.
CDS developed the search form that starts the journey planning process. The form is integrated with two systems – NRE’s journey planning and fares engine (IPTIS) and the third-party Journey Planner system that returns journey results.
The result
CDS designed and built a technical solution that provides 99.99% availability at the infrastructure and application levels to keep the website the nation relies on for rail travel, running smoothly and reliably.

4m+
page visits a day
99.99%
availability
Related thoughts
The role communications play in social inclusion
Posted in Insight, Inclusivity on 26/02/2021
To be effective, communications need to deliver a useful message to the audience you are seeking to engage, and if they don’t, they aren't fit for purpose.
Where to start when deploying new digital strategies
Posted in on 18/02/2021
Is it your time to press the reset button? Do you want to deploy new strategies and ideas?
Staff Q&A: A brief encounter with… Lucy Beldon
Posted in on 17/02/2021
Next up in the staff Q&A hot seat, it’s planning and inclusivity lead, Lucy Beldon
