I'm disappointed to see that National Rail Inquiries - that is, the 'official' railway ticket retailer in the UK, operated by the Rail Delivery Group - has started adding automatic redirects to Booking.com when you search for a itinerary. My complaint isn't so much about their use of this hotel reservations intermediary in particular; I'm a customer myself and they're actually somewhat reasonable to customers (their anti-competitive business practices notwithstanding). This is why I'm not happy:
- silently redirecting users to other sites and opening extra tabs is confusing to all but the most tech-savvy users
- there's no option for users to turn this off for good
- it's already a slow and resource-heavy website, and yet is exactly the thing which many users may be using in a hurry and on patchy mobile connections - now, it wants to open up another tab containing loads of images on every query
- this change further entrenches an existing near-monopoly, when this could have been a way of supporting independent hotels and keeping public money in the UK economy
My suggestion is to use TrainSplit instead, who actually know how to make a user-friendly website (I am not affiliated with them nor am I paid for saying this).







Karlsruhe's Nuclear Research Center is a secluded facility in the middle of a forest north of the city. To facilitate commuting, this extensive research complex is served by a dedicated branch of the Karlsruhe Stadtbahn system. Usually, this line is served by just two morning trains and two afternoon trains, all closed to the public, like the facility itself - but every couple of years, there is a chance to ride this line (and take photos of it) for the general public on Open Day events.