Ticket Retailer for Custom Through Journeys & Specific Trains

[lnerazuma]

Hi everyone,

I am looking for a UK rail ticket retailer that allows me to select specific trains and form a valid itinerary on a single through advance ticket. For example, I would like to book a journey from London King's Cross to Edinburgh and choose specific train models like the IC225 for part of the journey, and then continue with other specific models for different TOCs, with extra changing time at large station en route inc Doncaster, Leeds, York and Newcastle.

Put it simply, I am looking for a retailer that allows me to search for specific point-to-point journeys first and then combine multiple such journeys into a single through advance ticket, ensuring it remains valid as a through itinerary rather than split tickets.

I am aware that simpler routes like Southern only service from London Victoria to Southampton change at Gatwick and Brighton can be accommodated by Ticket Forum's site, but I am struggling to find a retailer that can handle more complex itineraries with multiple specific trains for each leg of the journey, especially during engineering works when there are easements that allow travelling out of the usual permitted route.

Does anyone know of such a retailer? Cheers.

 

[transportphoto]

I don’t believe such exists as it is unlikely to comply with Rail Delivery Group requirements. The Forum’s site allows you to specify increased interchange times which will give you some flexibility.

 

[Watershed]

This is an incredibly niche requirement; considering the complexity of the accreditation process it is unlikely to be economic to get any site accredited to offer such features.

 

[30907]

First of all, split tickets are valid for a through itinerary (eg in case of delay), so your assumption is flawed.
Second, a through Advance ticket from London to Edinburgh would be operator-specific; it might be possible to find a LNER&CONNECTIONS fare to somewhere like Prestonpans but finding availability with multiple changes of non-LNER train all the way from Doncaster would be incredibly unlikely.

 

[AlterEgo]

Put it simply, I am looking for a retailer that allows me to search for specific point-to-point journeys first and then combine multiple such journeys into a single through advance ticket, ensuring it remains valid as a through itinerary rather than split tickets.

Why does it need to be a single advance? What does this achieve for you that splits with an itinerary don't? I think you're a bit misled on what an Advance is - they aren't on every flow or station pair, and aren't endlessly customisable in the way you seem to think they are.

 

[pelli]

If you know which itinerary you want, then the forum's ticketing site seems to work, with some effort: I selected a random date in the future (14 Apr), and went on realtimetrains.co.uk to put together a random target itinerary from London King's Cross to Edinburgh changing, as suggested, at Doncaster, Leeds, York and Newcastle, using a variety of operators. I then went on BRtimes and looked up the minimum connection times at each intermediate station, to see how much extra time I should specify at each interchange to match my chosen itinerary.

1S09 GR KGX 07:30 - DON 09:09 (MCT 7min + extra 10min)
2B62 NT DON 09:26 - LDS 10:11 (MCT 10min + extra 21min)
1P19 TP LDS 10:42 - YRK 11:04 (MCT 8min + extra 20min)
1S37 XC YRK 11:32 - NCL 12:29 (MCT 8min + extra 18min)
1W11 GR NCL 12:55 - EDB 14:22

I could put this directly into the search on the beta site ( https://tickets-beta.railforums.co.uk/ ), whereas on the non-beta site ( https://tickets.railforums.co.uk/ ) it seems only three changes can be specified initially, but if you then edit your search then you can add a fourth one (or more).



Either way, I was then offered the desired itinerary, with a single Advance through ticket if splits are turned off:




However, as others have said, split tickets are no less valid than through tickets and can in this case save £16.83 after the share of saving fee is deducted, by splitting at Peterborough (but to get this itinerary to show with splitting turned on, I had to add in "avoid stopping at Grantham" to exclude the 07:27 and 07:33 departures from KGX). And if the desired itinerary is incompatible with a through ticket (whether due to routeing or quotas), then splitting allows you to still get the tickets you need to travel.

 

[MrJeeves]

The journey planner behind TrainSplit does actually support performing a journey search which only includes specific train UIDs. I believe we only use this feature in the Android app, where it's used for buying tickets for a specific train you're viewing the live running info for.

While I can't imagine the feature would be useful for most, there's nothing that would prevent this option being exposed by manually setting it in the website URL, for example. Certainly not a priority, but something that can be thought about.

 

[35B]

The journey planner behind TrainSplit does actually support performing a journey search which only includes specific train UIDs. I believe we only use this feature in the Android app, where it's used for buying tickets for a specific train you're viewing the live running info for.

While I can't imagine the feature would be useful for most, there's nothing that would prevent this option being exposed by manually setting it in the website URL, for example. Certainly not a priority, but something that can be thought about.

I’ve recently been journey planning where that would have been useful, as a way of forcing the planner to focus on a particular train rather than having to play with search criteria.

 

[Egg Centric]

I’ve recently been journey planning where that would have been useful, as a way of forcing the planner to focus on a particular train rather than having to play with search criteria.

Me too with a similar use case to OP's - forcing travel on a 225. Simple enough in my case to do it with search criteria but I suspect this isn't as niche amongst enthusiasts as one might think (although presumably would be with normals)