When planning a trip by rail across England, I was surprised to learn how many separate railway companies there are. For example, the cheapest and fastest way to travel from Leamington Spa to Liverpool James Street, a journey of less than a hundred miles, involves three separate railways!
What I like about the National Rail website is that it quickly sorts through the options, showing the time, cost, and stops along the way and seamlessly combines travel legs from different companies.
Unless you're looking to travel on a Saturday. Then, for some unexplainable reason, the website assumes you really wanted to travel on the prior Friday and shows trips on that day. I tested this on multiple different Saturdays in May, June and July, as I was trying to understand the train schedules. Are there strange British blue laws prohibiting Saturday travel? Did I accidentally enter Jewish sabbath mode? Finally, I figured out that if I kept hitting the "later trains" button, scrolling past all the Friday afternoon journeys, past the overnight trips, I could finally scroll my way into Saturday. Still, rather a Monty Python way to get to the info desired. It was a funny walk. "Keeping you on your toes!" could be the new National Rail motto.