(Not quite today, September 1996 apparently)
Tom recently pointed this out from the Wired archives. He was editing a bit of it and I must have sent this in. I don't remember it to be honest. I dimly remember working on a project for a nascent train timetable business and seeing this secret online timetable system in a warehouse in Derby, near the station. And reading it back I can see myself trying to capture some sort of unjustifiably angry tone. Strange.
Also odd to see myself writing something from the fag-end of British Rail, just as the nostalgistes try to revive it:
"Porn, gambling and railway timetables: three dead-cert killer Internet apps. Sure enough, online gambling is booming after overcoming regulatory hurdles by secreting servers in places like Belize (see www.vegas.com/wagernet/, for example), while porn is, well, pretty much ubiquitous.
But you just try to use the Web to check what time the first London train gets into Derby. Go on. I challenge you. (It is possible, BTW. Start at www.germany.net/.) But back here in the UK, aside from some localised timetables maintained by exasperated philanthropists (thank you to Brian Meek for www.kcl.ac.uk/kis/off_campus/rail/railindx.html), the national train timetable remains marooned in an off-line siding.
Internal politics within BR's rotting carcass are to blame. If the newly-formed train operating companies and Railtrack would only stop bickering for a moment (see www.rail.co.uk/ for their assorted corporate detritus), the entire timetable could be up on the Web next week for a relative pittance.
What makes the whole debacle doubly galling is that, somewhere within the remnants of BR, there is rumoured to reside just such an online timetabling system. There's even an application that lets you check real arrival times as displayed on station indicator boards around the country. Could it be that the train operators simply don't want anyone knowing how punctual (or otherwise) their trains are? I dunno, but I'm mighty pissed off with them all for denying me access to information that would help me to use their services. Utterly insane."