Plan your journey and get live times with the National Rail app

One of the most useful things a phone can do is to keep you up to date with the latest travel news. This is also important when getting the train as a journey may include changing at different stations. The National Rail app is the app version of the www.nationalrail.co.uk website.

It is free to download and use but it is supported by adverts. The adverts can be removed by paying £4.99.

The app is well designed and follows the usual pattern of tabs along the bottom for the main functions.

The app asks for your home and work stations when it first starts as this makes it much faster to get information when on the move. It's a good idea and extra stations can be added as favourites so it won't be a problem if you travel between more than two locations. The home station is used for the Get me home button and the app can use location data from the iPhone or iPad.

The Live trains tool can be used to check departures and arrivals for stations and the planner can be used for working more in advance.

There is a dedicated page for every station where they can be added to your favourites. There are buttons to show the live departures and arrivals, launch the station page on the National Rail website and to show the station in the Google Maps app.

This is a good tool for keeping train journey times down and so far the adverts haven't been so intrusive as to make the £4.99 for the ad-free version seem worth buying.