Journey only possible to book on Trainline?

[Cat21]

I keep encountering a frustrating issue with booking LNER trains.

I want to travel from Newcastle, beyond Edinburgh to Glasgow (using Scotrail) and this can be added onto an LNER ticket to Edinburgh for little or no extra cost (a single from Edinburgh to Glasgow on its own is £16.60 set price, so booking separately is a lot more expensive).

LNER release their advance tickets earlier than other operators, which means it's possible to book the journey as far as Edinburgh several weeks earlier than they will let me book the full journey on to Glasgow (and as I wait the price increases). Fair enough, but for some reason, Trainline do let me book the full journey as soon as the LNER tickets to Edinburgh are released.

I don't really understand why they are able to offer this while LNER can't, and I try to avoid Trainline because they add on extra booking fees.

So I was wondering if anyone knows whether any other sites use the same timetable as Trainline?

My journey isn't available to book on any other operator's site that I've checked, even though LNER have released the first part and Scotrail have now released the second part.

 

[Watershed]

Welcome to the forum. Can you tell us which date and time you're looking at travelling, and where you are starting and finishing your journey? This will help us narrow down where the problem lies.

 

[Cat21]

Welcome to the forum. Can you tell us which date and time you're looking at travelling, and where you are starting and finishing your journey? This will help us narrow down where the problem lies.

From Newcastle to Glasgow on 3rd November, however this issue isn't specific to the journey and date - it has happened every time I've tried to book from Newcastle/York/Kings Cross to Glasgow via Edinburgh in the past year or two.

 

[Bank Foot AM]

I'd say it's because the LNER website only allows you to select dates within their extended 'Early Bird' (up to 24 weeks) booking horizon for LNER-only journeys. For journeys involving other TOCs, the website booking horizon is set to an earlier date. For instance, today, the website offers Newcastle to Edinburgh Advance fares up to 13/12/2025. Selecting Newcastle to Glasgow (or just Newcastle to Ashington) sets the maximum calendar date to 31/10/2025.

Trainline can also sell LNER tickets within the Early Bird extended booking horizon, but the Trainline website calendar allows purchase of walk-up tickets well beyond that, up to 09/02/2026 today for a walk-up fare Newcastle to Glasgow (although not showing LNER trains due to the pretend mandatory seat reservation requirement).

If you don't want to use Trainline, you'll need to wait a little while for the LNER website to catch up.

 

[Watershed]

Yes, @Bank Foot AM has it exactly. The issue is with the booking horizon that the LNER site sets: it is different depending on the journey you enter.

Railsmartr will let you book until 5 November currently, if that helps?

Some websites also enforce one booking horizon in the user interface, but actually let you book further ahead than that if you change the date in the URL...

 

[yorkie]

It's also worth trying our ticketing site; it won't offer fares quite as far ahead as the likes of Trainline, but if the date is available to select, it will let you book beyond the LNER network.

When I checked on Tuesday, we weren't selling it, but apparently we were selling it the day or so after.