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[pokemonsuper9]

it's rejecting it because:

That's weird
Previously it's given me 10:26 Crewe - Attenborough 12:06
12:43 Attenborough - 13:23 Leicester.
which doesn't double back at all (and serves as a good time to eat lunch)

 

[endecotp]

Any idea why the site didn't offer me the 1000 LNER ex Edinburgh today for a journey to Dorchester, while the Scotrail site did? This was at around 0920 today.

It only offered some CrossCountry trains, and then the 1200 LNER. I'm on the train now and there are plenty of seats.

 

[Adam Williams]

Any idea why the site didn't offer me the 1000 LNER ex Edinburgh today for a journey to Dorchester, while the Scotrail site did? This was at around 0920 today.

It only offered some CrossCountry trains, and then the 1200 LNER. I'm on the train now and there are plenty of seats.

It's much more difficult to investigate problems of this nature after departure, but I have had a quick look.

It looks like these itineraries were disposed of because there were substantially longer than the other alternatives you were offered (get in at 19:24, which was no better than when the 11:25 result would've got you in) and probably were no cheaper. Different journey planners will have different views on when to include/exclude different itinerary suggestions.

It was probably for the best, given the eventual fate of that 10:00 departure!

 

[endecotp]

It looks like these itineraries were disposed of because there were substantially longer than the other alternatives you were offered (get in at 19:24, which was no better than when the 11:25 result would've got you in)

This all depends on how long it takes you to cross London on the tube. I always do it quicker than any JP believes, often making the journey an hour quicker.

It was probably for the best, given the eventual fate of that 10:00 departure!

Yes, I took the 1000 which was terminated in Newcastle. I guess there”s probably a thread about that somewhere. I’m now on a scenic train to Carlisle, in the hope that the West Coast is less screwed up this afternoon! Wish me luck!

 

[Haywain]

I always do it quicker than any JP believes, often making the journey an hour quicker.

Journey planners can't offer you those quicker cross-London interchanges.

 

[endecotp]

Journey planners can't offer you those quicker cross-London interchanges.

By "can't", do you mean "aren't allowed to"?

 

[pokemonsuper9]

By "can't", do you mean "aren't allowed to"?

Yes, exactly that.
Just use google maps and add 2 minutes at each end for a realistic time (for an able bodied adult willing to run a bit)

 

[ainsworth74]

By "can't", do you mean "aren't allowed to"?

Journey planners are required (at least those attached to selling tickets!) to provide an itinerary which complies with the minimum connection times of any interchanges that you make. Cross-London interchanges are well known to be quite substantial (in order to accommodate everyone, including people with no familiarity at all with London).

For Kinds Cross to Waterloo in the middle of the day is 23 minutes plus the minimum interchange time of both Kings Cross and Waterloo (both 15 minutes) meaning the interchange time that any journey planner uses must be at least 53 minutes.

To me and you that's probably not far off triple the time it takes to make that interchange. But a journey planner must use that figure when offering an itinerary and selling a ticket against it.

 

[Haywain]

By "can't", do you mean "aren't allowed to"?

No, I mean exactly what I typed.

 

[sheff1]

Journey planners can't offer you those quicker cross-London interchanges.

Journey planners which are independent of ticket selling can and do.
Of course journey plans so provided would not constitute a valid itinerary in the event of delays.

 

[Haywain]

Journey planners which are independent of ticket selling can and do.
Of course journey plans so provided would not constitute a valid itinerary in the event of delays.

And are, therefore, utterly meaningless.

 

[Tester]

And are, therefore, utterly meaningless.

They may well be utterly meaningless to you (which doesn't add value to the discussion), but they enable people to see what may be possible (which can be useful).

 

[sheff1]

And are, therefore, utterly meaningless.

Whilst it may be meaningless to you, not so meaningless to some to know it will, in normal circumstances, be perfectly possible to transfer across London* much quicker than the ‘officially allowed’ time and hence catch an earlier onward train using one’s walk up ticket.

* Other cross town or in station changes available.

 

[Haywain]

Whilst it may be meaningless to you, not so meaningless to some to know it will, in normal circumstances, be perfectly possible to transfer across London* much quicker than the ‘officially allowed’ time and hence catch an earlier onward train using one’s walk up ticket.

* Other cross town or in station changes available.

Nothing stops you doing that but no-one is going to offer an official itinerary to do so as that would confer contractual rights that the railway will not wish to offer or be held to.

 

[alistairlees]

Nothing stops you doing that but no-one is going to offer an official itinerary to do so as that would confer contractual rights that the railway will not wish to offer or be held to.

Silverrail and this national rail already offer non contractual connections that are not in the data.

 

[sheff1]

Nothing stops you doing that but no-one is going to offer an official itinerary to do so as that would confer contractual rights that the railway will not wish to offer or be held to.

I don’t want an ‘official itinerary’. As I said some journey planners do give me what I want, contrary to the claim that they “can’t”.

 

[Adam Williams]

https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/fastjp.294204/post-7553382

 

[ainsworth74]

https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/fastjp.294204/post-7553382

And on that helpful note I think we probably should leave this particularly discussion here! Minimum connection times are something which are a perennial bugbear but, for the time being, something we have to live with. So lets get back to the topic of this thread please

 

[endecotp]

It looks like these itineraries were disposed of because there were substantially longer than the other alternatives you were offered

I encourage you to adjust whatever threshold you are using to implement that filtering, for the reasons discussed above. I don't need the site to offer me the "too quick" itinerary, I'd just like it to show what the Scotrail site does.

 

[Adam Williams]

I encourage you to adjust whatever threshold you are using to implement that filtering, for the reasons discussed above. I don't need the site to offer me the "too quick" itinerary, I'd just like it to show what the Scotrail site does.

It's not going to be able to just magically match whatever Trainline are doing, but I agree it'd be nice to use train busy-ness as a ranking signal if the data source was good enough.

The overwhelming majority of customers are more interested in going for either the quickest journey, or the cheapest one (provided the alternative is not too slow). If there's a specific itinerary you want, there's more than enough control available to get the itinerary to surface via the Advanced Options.

Unfortunately the other limiting factor is the reservation system - querying for ticket availability is "rationed" for various reasons that don't hold up to technical scrutiny - so any change to surface more itineraries has to be evaluated to determine the impact on reservation system enquiries.

 

[yorkie]

I encourage you to adjust whatever threshold you are using to implement that filtering, for the reasons discussed above. I don't need the site to offer me the "too quick" itinerary, I'd just like it to show what the Scotrail site does.

Do you have an example, for a future dated journey, of an itinerary which the Scotrail site is offering, but we aren't? If you can list the itinerary, I can look into it.

Presumably you are saying that the itinerary should be offered automatically, and not by using any of the various additional options provided (such as via/call at/change at/avoid/additional interchange time etc)

 

[Adam Williams]

Presumably you are saying that the itinerary should be offered automatically

Why should it be today, though, if it's not cheaper and it's longer than the other itineraries (w/ the change penalties accounted for)?

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the wider point here, but the journey planner is working as designed.

 

[endecotp]

Do you have an example, for a future dated journey, of an itinerary which the Scotrail site is offering, but we aren't? If you can list the itinerary, I can look into it.

05/01/2025:

EDB dep 1000
KGX arr 1411
WAT dep 1505
DCH arr 1750

If you think 54 minutes isn't enough time to cross London, then the next train is:

WAT dep 1535
DCH arr 1809

and you aren't offering that either.

Presumably you are saying that the itinerary should be offered automatically, and not by using any of the various additional options provided (such as via/call at/change at/avoid/additional interchange time etc)

I've not found any advanced settings that cause those itineraries to appear.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Dec 2025 ==

Why should it be today, though, if it's not cheaper and it's longer than the other itineraries (w/ the change penalties accounted for)?

While investigating the advanced options, as suggested by yorkie, I was offered this when I asked for "via London" and "intensive search":

EDB dep 1005
Derby arr 1427
Derby dep 1538
Tamworth arr 1601
Tamworth dep 1656
EUS arr 1824
tube
VIC dep 1905
Clapham Junction arr 1911
*** spend the night at Clapham Junction ***
Calpham Junction dep 0537
DCH arr 0827

Clearly the itineraries that I'm interested in are better than that, yet aren't shown even with the "intensive search".

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the wider point here, but the journey planner is working as designed.

Are you sure?

 

[Adam Williams]

Are you sure?

Not after some further conversation about it!

The itinerary in question takes substantially less time than all of the other ones returned back in your original search on the 23rd, and shouldn't have been discarded. This is even after the inflated official cross-London connection times (in fact the x-London times are a complete red herring here).

 

[DeverseSam]

@Adam Williams Is the @trainsplit account on tiktok official despite not having a blue tick?

 

[Adam Williams]

@Adam Williams Is the @trainsplit account on tiktok official despite not having a blue tick?

It is run on Raileasy's behalf. The content is not produced in-house.

 

[ABB125]

Is there an ability to save "favourite journeys" to speed up repeated bookings of the same journey made regularly? Main use case is people who commute a few days a week but don't buy tickets in advance.

What would be very nice is, once a journey is saved with ticket(s) pre-selected, you simply press a button, choose the date, and then go straight to payment.

 

[Adam Williams]

Is there an ability to save "favourite journeys" to speed up repeated bookings of the same journey made regularly?

Yes

What would be very nice is, once a journey is saved with ticket(s) pre-selected

It doesn't allow skipping search results or booking itinerary-less journeys at this point in time

 

[ABB125]

Yes


It doesn't allow skipping search results or booking itinerary-less journeys at this point in time

Where can I find the favourites bit? I couldn't see it earlier (hence asking here!)

 

[Adam Williams]

Where can I find the favourites bit? I couldn't see it earlier (hence asking here!)

It's a journey planner tab; buttons also on the search results page

See https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...booking-your-rail-tickets.236796/post-7564200