TrainTicker vs train times apps: which suits you?

If you're after a train times app alternative, the honest answer is that you probably don't need to replace your app at all. Apps are free, cover every station and journey, and usually sell tickets too. What a home departure board like TrainTicker does better is the same trip, every day, from the same station: the times are already showing when you walk past, so nobody has to pick up a phone, open an app and find the station again. For a lot of households the answer is both.

What do train times apps do well?

Quite a lot. The National Rail Enquiries app covers every station in Great Britain, with live departures, platforms and journey planning. Train company apps do much the same for their own trains and let you buy tickets and see your bookings. Ticket apps combine times with buying.

They're free to download. They go everywhere with you. They can plan a journey from Truro to Inverness and tell you where to change. A board on a shelf will never do that, and we wouldn't pretend otherwise.

Where do apps get in the way?

Mostly in the small, repeated moments. Checking your usual train means picking up your phone, unlocking it, opening the app and finding your station. That's maybe twenty seconds. But it's twenty seconds at exactly the time you have the least of them, and the phone has a way of turning a quick check into five minutes of messages.

Apps also only help the person holding the phone. In a house where three people catch different trains from the same station, everyone's checking separately, or not checking at all. And the kids who need the school train probably aren't using your app.

What does a home board do differently?

It's always on and it's shared. TrainTicker sits on a shelf showing the next trains from your station, laid out like a platform board: time, destination, platform, status, calling points scrolling underneath, then the next two trains in turn, and a clock with seconds along the bottom. Anyone walking past can see it.

It can also be set up for exactly your trip, which an app's general departures screen isn't. Pick the station you travel to and it only lists trains that call there. Tell it how long your walk takes and it hides the trains you can't reach in time. Expected times, cancellations and the reasons given for them show up as they would on the station screen.

How do they compare side by side?

Do they show the same times?

They should broadly agree. Most live train information in Britain comes from Darwin, National Rail's live train information system, which feeds National Rail Enquiries, many station screens and a lot of apps. TrainTicker reads it too and checks for changes every 10 seconds. If you ever see a few seconds' difference, it's usually down to refresh timing. More on that in what is Darwin.

When should you stick with an app?

If you travel to different places most weeks, an app is the better tool and a board won't add much. Same if you rarely take the train, or you mostly drive and catch a train now and then. And if you're after tickets, journey planning or live updates while you're already travelling, that's app territory.

When does a board make sense?

When the same journey matters to you or your household most days. Commuters who leave at the same time each morning, families with a school train, people working hybrid weeks who forget the times between office days. Also anyone who just enjoys trains and likes having their local station's departures running on the shelf, which is a perfectly good reason in our book.

If you'd prefer not to buy hardware, there's a middle path: put a live board on a spare tablet or TV. Our guide to live train times at home runs through every option, and what is a home train departure board goes deeper on the board itself.

Using both

This is the split we'd suggest. The app stays on your phone for planning, tickets and the odd trip somewhere new. The board sits by the door for the daily glance. They're reading the same data, so they won't argue with each other.

Try the board side for free first in the live demo, which runs in any browser with no signup. If it earns its place, you can order TrainTicker. Orders ship within 3 to 4 weeks and come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.