By the way, we still have some details of the old 1950 Requirements, including this structure gauge diagram.

Railway Group Standards:

These are what you need if you want to design anything, or operate anything, on the national network, and they're available on a convenient searchable database at the Rail Safety & Standards Board website.

Rules and Regulations:

The British Railway Rule Book applies to all staff working on the national network. It is now published by the Rail Safety and Standards Board. This is in the new, modular format, introduced in December 2003. It includes the Signalling General Instructions and the various Block Regulations. They're all in pdf format so you can't re-write them to suit yourself! And you can even get the Railway Group Standards on-line now.

Sectional Appendices:

These are now available on the Web in the form of NESA, the National Electronic Sectional Appendix. But this is only available on subscription, and it's password protected. You can read more about NESA in a leaflet published by Network Rail (pdf file, 152 KB).

Hard copy SAs are still being published and they can now be bought on-line, direct from Willsons Printers of Newark. You can also buy the various bits of the Rule Book in printed form from these good people, and indeed more esoteric items such as the AC Electrified Lines Instructions.

Train Planning Rules:

The Rules of the Plan and the Rules of the Route are the constraints for writing the working timetable - signalling headways, junction margins, platform lengths, station dwell times, things like that. Again, they're all in pdf format. These are best viewed on-line, because the individual pdf files all link back to an interactive menu. Note: NR keep changing the link for this document. If you find that the link above is broken, try searching for "National Rules of the Route", using the Search facility at the top right hand corner of the NR site. Make sure you include the word "National", otherwise you'll get back hundreds of largely irrelevant links.

National Rail Timetable:

OK, so this was never Private, but the printed paper version has been Not For Publication since May 2007. You can buy an alternative UK Rail Timetable from TSO (formerly The Stationery Office). And there's a rival version too, the Bradshaw-Mitchell Rail Times, available from Middleton Press.

The traditional NRT has been replaced by a series of pdf files, and these are now available on Network Rail's site for the Summer 2008 timetable.

If you know which table you want, go to one of these handy "instant link" sites: choose from PRAR's National Rail Timetables Linker or Hils's Network Rail timetables quick links. Do be careful to check which year you're looking at, and whether summer or winter - Network Rail haven't bothered to include validity dates on these pdfs.

For a Continental touch, PRAR now has a list of Belgian National Rail Timetables too.

Loco and Unit Diagrams:

Or Programmes, if you're on ScotRail. PRAR very kindly maintains this list of Loco and Unit Diagrams, drawn from a variety of sources (mostly unofficial).

Railway Codes and Acronyms:

The railways use a great number of codes and acronyms and abbreviations for such things as stations, sidings, signal boxes, sections of line, systems of computer and so on. Phil Deaves maintains a pretty comprehensive list of Railway Codes and other data. If you just want to check the National Location Codes for passenger stations (National Rail and London Underground), download this list (MS Excel format, 224 KB) - it's a spreadsheet, so you can search it or re-order it by name or by number. If you just want to check the three letter station codes (e.g. ABW = Abbey Wood), you can find a list sorted by code and a list sorted by name on the uk.railway FAQ.

National Fares Manual:

Now, this is one thing that's not on the Web, though ATOC did briefly put the Avantix Traveller fares database, as issued to rail-appointed travel agents, online. They normally protect that part of their site with a password and sure enough, it soon disappeared. And although ATOC have put the non-fares sections of the NFM online, in portable document format (pdf), they've never published Sections B and C - the bits with the actual fares.

If you want to know the fare for a particular journey, your best plan usually is to use the National Rail Plan My Journey page and start by submitting a request for train times. You will also find the Accessible UK Train Timetables site quicker and simpler to use. For some strange reason, season ticket prices can be found on the South West Trains site.

If you want to look at the various options for combined rail+bus or rail+ferry tickets, you need the Rail Links Manual, which is published separately from the NFM.

You can still buy a real paper copy of the National Fares Manual though, complete with those all-important fares. It is now distributed by TSO (formerly The Stationery Office) and you can buy it through their website. There are seven separate volumes to the NFM: Scotland, North West, Midlands, West, East, London, South, each costing £15. They may want to charge extra for postage and packing, typically £3.75 per order for mainland UK delivery, but they don't always. Do bear in mind that each volume is the size of a telephone directory and won't fit through your average letterbox!

You might also want to check out the Conditions of Carriage while you weigh up which ticket or combination of tickets to buy. The C of C are also available in portable document format (aka pdf).

You can also find the Routeing Guide on the Web. (The publicly available printed version, which lasted for precisely one edition, is now something of a collector's item, and ATOC won't sell the new printed book.)

If you're lucky enough to benefit from Privilege Travel Facilities, you can find full details on the Rail Staff Travel section of the ATOC website.

Freight:

There used to be several useful things at Network Rail's Freight Commercial site, not least of which was the Route Directory, which gave you lots of nice coloured maps of the network along with information on loading gauge, route availability, electrification and other technical data. But it seems to have disappeared in one of their periodic revamps of the website. For that kind of detailed route information you now have to download pdf files of their Business Plan. Each "Route" gets its own section. Plough through it for long enough and you'll find the figures you need for loading gauge, route availability and so on.

Telegrams:

Coming one of these fine days: British Railways Standard Codes for Telegrams, which I aim to make a handy searchable database of all the telegraphic codewords, from ACACIA ("Special train as under left (or leaving) at ....") to ZINC ("Bulk zinc oxide wagon, inside hoppers, doors in roof and outlets at bottom").

Incidentally, the phonetic alphabet in 1953 officially went like this: Andrew, Benjamin, Charlie, David, Edward, Frederick, George, Harry, Isaac, Jack, King, Lucy, Mary, Nellie, Oliver, Peter, Queenie, Robert, Sugar, Tommy, Uncle, Victor (well, at least that one's not changed!), William, Xmas, Yellow, Zebra. Today's version can be found in the Rule Book, Module G, Section 11.6, and there's a comprehensive list of different alphabets at the Phonetic Alphabets of the World site.

London Underground train timetables:

Yes, now even detailed London Underground train timetables can be found on the Web. If you go to the Transport for London Interactive Map, you'll find instructions for downloading timetables for individual stations, or simply first and last trains. You'll need a reasonably advanced browser to get the best out of it though: they suggest a minimum of Internet Explorer 4 or Netscape Navigator 4. Otherwise, there are separate instructions for downloading information in text form only.

London bus timetables:

This is an extraordinary site, with links to a whole range of current and historical maps and timetables. Some are available to buy, but the current bus timetables can be downloaded free of charge.

The Devil's Guide:

OK, so this isn't really a particularly Private item, but The Devil's Guide is a most useful compendium of mostly engineering information on railways. The Devil's Guide Glossary is particularly valuable.

Odds and sods:

The Railway Object Name Thesaurus might be of interest to you. As indeed might the Bashers' Jargon Buster (never an official publication of course, but I think it deserves a mention here). And let's mention Railnews, still one of the most reliable sources of hard news on today's railway and with a wealth of information on its website (particularly Jobs and Holidays).

Oh, and I'll throw in JARGONYMS - an MS Word file listing Acronyms and Jargon from the Waste and Resource Management Industry. It's very extensive and includes a lot of railway and transport terms that might be mystifying you. I used it to find out the meaning of RFID - Radio Frequency Identification tags - which I had been confusing with RID - Regulations concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Rail.