Introducing RailUK Tickets - support the forum when booking your rail tickets!

[Egg Centric]

Typically this will be because some of the overtaken/tortoise inbound journeys that are appearing in combination with one outbound result will be deemed worthless against a different outbound - if there is a faster inbound journey with the same or less changes that's no more expensive (in the context of the selected outbound) in all 4 fare filtering possibilities (all fares/walkup only combined with with std or 1st class), it's deemed pointless and generally will be hidden (it's actually a bit more complicated and I can't remember all the rules, it happens upstream of us, but this is the gist).

I hope that makes some sense at least.

I think I understand the principle (it's what I was alluding to with "All advances so not a question of validity") but I'm not sure it's explaining what I'm seeing in practice. It doesn't seem sensible to clutter this thread up with it though as I don't think there's any practical relevance so maybe kinda thing to discuss if/when we randomly meet at some forum do.

What *is* of practical relevance to me though for the journey I'm planning in the above vid (and haven't booked yet) is better standard premium handling. Ideally I'd want a "treat standard premium as first" button that did exactly what that suggests. Then I could just plugin Hexham to Watford 1st and end up with a Hexham-Carlisle standard (obv) and then Carlisle to Watford in standard premium or (in highly unlikely event it's cheaper) 1st along the way. I'm aware how to book standard premium through the site and that's what I'll be doing once I decide on the exact journey but simplifying it and also allowing booking as a single itinerary in case of delay repay/disruption arguments would be very handy.

Another thing that would be handy is a "break every X minutes for Y minutes" option but that might be getting too specialised... use case here is travelling with a kid and it'd be nice to investigate the various <2 hour in a single train permutations automatically.

 

[OscarH]

What *is* of practical relevance to me though for the journey I'm planning in the above vid (and haven't booked yet) is better standard premium handling. Ideally I'd want a "treat standard premium as first" button that did exactly what that suggests. Then I could just plugin Hexham to Watford 1st and end up with a Hexham-Carlisle standard (obv) and then Carlisle to Watford in standard premium or (in highly unlikely event it's cheaper) 1st along the way. I'm aware how to book standard premium through the site and that's what I'll be doing once I decide on the exact journey but simplifying it and also allowing booking as a single itinerary in case of delay repay/disruption arguments would be very handy

This is on the radar, and while I can't promise timelines I can say there is work in the pipeline that will allow the std prem handling to be far less primitive

Another thing that would be handy is a "break every X minutes for Y minutes" option but that might be getting too specialised... use case here is travelling with a kid and it'd be nice to investigate the various <2 hour in a single train permutations automatically.

This is an interesting one I haven't heard before! I'm not sure it'll ever happen, but it's always interesting to hear suggestions because if other people bring up the same it might

 

[Egg Centric]

This is on the radar, and while I can't promise timelines I can say there is work in the pipeline that will allow the std prem handling to be far less primitive

Thanks. In the meantime as an easier (or maybe not so easy!) thing I wonder if there is a way that manually made bookings can be made into a single retailer endorsed itinerary / e-ticket combo? I just made a minute or two ago E-DR5QLHNBP which consists of the following:



(to get the standard premium on the Carlisle - London, while standard on Hexham - Carlisle).

They have a tight timing on Carlisle - particularly the outgoing on Sunday which is right down to the minimum connection time* - so if there were any issues having it as a single document would be handy.

*edit except I'm a muppet who's just noticed they booked 14:46 instead of 15:46 ao guess I'm gonna have to incur a change fee hehe

 

[Vexed]

Thanks. In the meantime as an easier (or maybe not so easy!) thing I wonder if there is a way that manually made bookings can be made into a single retailer endorsed itinerary / e-ticket combo? I just made a minute or two ago E-DR5QLHNBP which consists of the following:

View attachment 200145

(to get the standard premium on the Carlisle - London, while standard on Hexham - Carlisle).

They have a tight timing on Carlisle - particularly the outgoing on Sunday which is right down to the minimum connection time - so if there were any issues having it as a single document would be handy.

Maybe just get a screenshot of the through itinerary from the National Rail website or ask a ticket office for a print out. This should be enough to prove it was valid. That won't be retailer endorsed of course.

 

[daveo]

Please send customer support an email.

Thank you Adam Sorted!!

 

[Egg Centric]

*edit except I'm a muppet who's just noticed they booked 14:46 instead of 15:46 ao guess I'm gonna have to incur a change fee hehe

In spirit of above post by @daveo just to mention this was also sorted by customer support easily as it can't be done fully automatically yet when it's part of a journey. Never had any doubt this would be case but just for info of anyone lurking who is used to TOC or trainline "service"

 

[Bayum]

Don’t know if this is an oddity; used this over the past week and noticed a few ‘changes’ were actually the same train.

 

[SickyNicky]

Don’t know if this is an oddity; used this over the past week and noticed a few ‘changes’ were actually the same train.

That shouldn't happen. Can you give an example please?

 

[Bayum]

That shouldn't happen. Can you give an example please?

 

[SickyNicky]

Which date is that please?

 

[SickyNicky]

Yes it is, which is why I was asking about the date, since it doesn't come up on random dates in our year system.

 

[Bayum]

Ahh fair. I was looking at Friday 20th March.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 15 Mar 2026 ==

Ah. So I’ve checked it on Friday‘s date and RTT didn’t have it changing because the set didn’t go on to Cardiff for whatever reason.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

Ahh fair. I was looking at Friday 20th March.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 15 Mar 2026 ==

Ah. So I’ve checked it on Friday‘s date and RTT didn’t have it changing because the set didn’t go on to Cardiff for whatever reason.

And I've now been able to re-create it. It seems to pull a different set of splits for each.
Direct train £93 with splits at Sheffield, Birmingham New St, and Cheltenham.
Direct train but not £74.40 with splits at Sheffield, Derby, and Gloucester.

Results | RailUK Tickets

TrainSplit is a free service that makes it easy to find the cheapest train tickets for your journey.

tickets.railforums.co.uk

 

[Puffing Devil]

I’m still finding it a bit of a pain that I can’t search for two adults when only one person has a railcard. At the moment, the system applies the railcard to both passengers, which obviously isn’t right for many bookings.

I know it’s been mentioned before that the split-ticket logic makes this mathematically complex, but would it be possible to implement a "straight up" or "no-split" search option for these cases?

Other sites like Northern Rail handle mixed railcards easily because they aren't searching for splits. If the RailUK engine had a toggle to just process a standard point-to-point booking, it would mean we could still book through the forum link and support the site even when the splitting logic isn't needed or is too complex for the passenger mix.

Is this something the Trainsplit team could look at as a middle-ground solution?

I want to support the site, but this is making it harder than it needs to be for simple trips.

 

[OscarH]

I’m still finding it a bit of a pain that I can’t search for two adults when only one person has a railcard. At the moment, the system applies the railcard to both passengers, which obviously isn’t right for many bookings.

I know it’s been mentioned before that the split-ticket logic makes this mathematically complex, but would it be possible to implement a "straight up" or "no-split" search option for these cases?

Other sites like Northern Rail handle mixed railcards easily because they aren't searching for splits. If the RailUK engine had a toggle to just process a standard point-to-point booking, it would mean we could still book through the forum link and support the site even when the splitting logic isn't needed or is too complex for the passenger mix.

Is this something the Trainsplit team could look at as a middle-ground solution?

I want to support the site, but this is making it harder than it needs to be for simple trips.

In theory that would be possible, it's something we've considered before. However, there's hopefully a more complete solution that will be available in the coming months - we can't give any dates, but keep an eye on this thread for updates.

 

[nlt]

Can someone please explain why when I click through to the Tickets section on this site the Journey Planner box is always greyed out? I am using Chrome on a Mac.

 

[Adam Williams]

Can someone please explain why when I click through to the Tickets section on this site the Journey Planner box is always greyed out? I am using Chrome on a Mac.

Does it get better if you click here?

 

[Haywain]

Can someone please explain why when I click through to the Tickets section on this site the Journey Planner box is always greyed out? I am using Chrome on a Mac.

It's not a problem I encounter.

 

[nlt]

Does it get better if you click here?

No, it takes several minutes before it clears and becomes useable.

 

[Adam Williams]

It being "always greyed out" is very different to "it takes several minutes before it clears and becomes useable".

It'll stay greyed out whilst the JS is retrieved, and the Vue.JS app boots and mounts the journey planner component.

This should be pretty quick even with an empty cache (< 1 second) on any half-decent machine with an internet connection provisioned in the last decade.

If you're seeing considerably worse performance, please write into customer support with some details about your hardware, internet connection/speed, browser of choice etc and someone can look into it.

I would only expect several minutes (if it actually is several minutes and you're not exaggerating) on a 2G mobile data or high-orbit satellite connection or something equivalently poor.

 

[styles]

It being "always greyed out" is very different to "it takes several minutes before it clears and becomes useable".

It'll stay greyed out whilst the JS is retrieved, and the Vue.JS app boots and mounts the journey planner component.

This should be pretty quick even with an empty cache (< 1 second) on any half-decent machine with an internet connection provisioned in the last decade.

If you're seeing considerably worse performance, please write into customer support with some details about your hardware, internet connection/speed, browser of choice etc and someone can look into it.

I would only expect several minutes (if it actually is several minutes and you're not exaggerating) on a 2G mobile data or high-orbit satellite connection or something equivalently poor.

It doesn't bother me but I have a recorded 800Mbps connection with low latency and it takes a few seconds to render on my devices. I don't have accurate measurements to hand but could get them if useful.

 

[Adam Williams]

It doesn't bother me but I have a recorded 800Mbps connection with low latency and it takes a few seconds to render on my devices. I don't have accurate measurements to hand but could get them if useful.

Do send over whatever you have, definitely happy to receive more data points and try and identify if there's room for improvement. I'm not saying it's perfect, the bundle can probably be split up more than it currently is and otherwise optimised, but the stats we get from Sentry show that the LCP (LargestContentfulPaint) is pretty good for the vast majority (81%) of visitors, satisfactory for another 10% and poor for the remainder.

 

[styles]

Do send over whatever you have, definitely happy to receive more data points and try and identify if there's room for improvement. I'm not saying it's perfect, the bundle can probably be split up more than it currently is and otherwise optimised, but the stats we get from Sentry show that the LCP (LargestContentfulPaint) is pretty good for the vast majority (81%) of visitors, satisfactory for another 10% and poor for the remainder.

I expect my VPN and script scanners are at play but sites like Skyscanner do happen to load pretty quickly so I'm not sure.

I'll get some recordings next time I'm on the home laptop and send them across.

 

[sannox]

Might be asking a silly question here - trying to book for the family - 2 adults and 1 kid, with a two together railcard covering the adults. When on the site's ticketing site, I get an warning saying "Your railcard isn't valid for this combination of adults and children. Please add non-railcard holders as separate journeys into your basket so you can pay for them together."

That seems a little bit unhelpful and harder to do. Other providers don't make me do this, but will offer fares that need adults and kids, such as LNER family saver tickets.

Am I missing something obvious as to why it does this?

 

[Adam Williams]

Might be asking a silly question here - trying to book for the family - 2 adults and 1 kid, with a two together railcard covering the adults. When on the site's ticketing site, I get an warning saying "Your railcard isn't valid for this combination of adults and children. Please add non-railcard holders as separate journeys into your basket so you can pay for them together."

That seems a little bit unhelpful and harder to do. Other providers don't make me do this, but will offer fares that need adults and kids, such as LNER family saver tickets.

Am I missing something obvious as to why it does this?

Introducing RailUK Tickets - support the forum when booking your rail tickets!

Typically this will be because some of the overtaken/tortoise inbound journeys that are appearing in combination with one outbound result will be deemed worthless against a different outbound - if there is a faster inbound journey with the same or less changes that's no more expensive (in the...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[sannox]

Thanks for the link back - missed that one.

 

[Blaine]

Thanks for setting this up, booked again today (avoiding Uber's 10% back promo on paypal+!) as your seat selector is better even than LNER's (which doesn't support individual seat picking on Grand Central). GC tickets are so cheap and compulsory reservation so an extra ticket can be a great way to get more legroom, as long as the seats line up! Interesting to see your site also offer a Durham - Knottingley advance ticket that I couldn't get LNER to show, regardless of changing via / avoids - LNER were happy to sell more expensive tickets on slower services instead.

Speaking of pickiness there were a few quirks you may (or may not!) want to look at...


The seat selector somehow renders this as a bendy train with some surprising gaps... still nicer than Grand Central's own train layout which used that graphical design program Excel! Note it promises the ability to show me which seats have window views (none apparently), and whilst its obvious to us what the grey rectangle is others may struggle.


All the seats selected are apparently window seats after all, rather than table window/aisle!


It's not clear what an unreserved coach is, or why it matters - it sounds like nothing is currently reserved and therefore plenty of choice. Maybe 'unreservable' would be clearer? Though I can select seats (which errors out when saving on Cross Country, but works on LNER) and of course it shows some seats are reserved.


Not sure what the point of this message is - I feel bad as I'm not a business and missing out. It implies I can click something to be a business and extend the stated time.


I'm unclear what Raileasy is or why it matters - clicking the link takes me to Trainsplit's T&Cs (another name that doesn't appear when I go https://tickets.railforums.co.uk/)

Very much a personal preference, but a group booking delivered individual Apple Pay tickets which stops you swiping between them when being inspected. Will be interesting to see when the apple pay tickets appear and disappear from my home screen and active wallet - LNER have had all sorts of problems with theirs, there was a long-running bug which made them appear a day early (and scare you!), then they would disappear and archive themselves when the train arrived (great idea, unless you're walking through a barrier 2 minutes later and need to scan!) and currently they're still showing in my active pile a few weeks after travel.

 

[talldave]

Can the site sell Thameslink child £2 flat fares? And would it be possible for the associated adult ticket to have a Railcard discount applied?

 

[talldave]

Not that I'm aware of. In fairness most retailers don't, since none of the rules required for selling them are contained in the industry data feed, and instead have to be manually coded.

For example they can't be sold on their own as they're not valid for unaccompanied children. There are also time restrictions on when they can be sold, yet they can still be sold together with an Anytime adult ticket.


That's permitted. They can also be combined with GroupSave where applicable. For most journeys, two adults and a child works out cheaper if all three are charged as adults - to allow the adults to benefit from the GroupSave discount.

Sounds like it's going to be a ticket office only job. Frustrating since we'd be wanting a Boundary Zone returrn and our starting station is TfL managed, so zero chance of making an obscure ticket purchase!

 

[Adam Williams]

Thanks for this very useful feedback, responses below:

Thanks for setting this up, booked again today (avoiding Uber's 10% back promo on paypal+!) as your seat selector is better even than LNER's (which doesn't support individual seat picking on Grand Central). GC tickets are so cheap and compulsory reservation so an extra ticket can be a great way to get more legroom, as long as the seats line up! Interesting to see your site also offer a Durham - Knottingley advance ticket that I couldn't get LNER to show, regardless of changing via / avoids - LNER were happy to sell more expensive tickets on slower services instead.

Speaking of pickiness there were a few quirks you may (or may not!) want to look at...

The seat selector somehow renders this as a bendy train with some surprising gaps... still nicer than Grand Central's own train layout which used that graphical design program Excel! Note it promises the ability to show me which seats have window views (none apparently), and whilst its obvious to us what the grey rectangle is others may struggle.

Can I ask you to scroll down and use the built-in feedback mechanism so we can pick this up? We have a reliance today on the data the operators maintain, which is usually of a poor quality. However, if you let us know via the feedback dialog it'll send useful information to us that enables identifying the service.

All the seats selected are apparently window seats after all, rather than table window/aisle!

Again, if you can use the feedback dialog we can check what attributes are set on the seats in the reservation system and override it/escalate when we see that it's wrong.

It's not clear what an unreserved coach is, or why it matters - it sounds like nothing is currently reserved and therefore plenty of choice. Maybe 'unreservable' would be clearer? Though I can select seats (which errors out when saving on Cross Country, but works on LNER) and of course it shows some seats are reserved.

"Unreserved" is the term that TOCs appear to use, as opposed to unreservable.

Some TOCs don't seem to consistently prevent reservations in the coaches that they have described elsewhere as "unreserved", or have very complex undocumented rules that open up reservations closer to travel or if other coaches fill up and the moon is in the waning gibbous phase. It is difficult to know if we will be able to make those reservations ahead of time without knowledge of this business logic.

Not sure what the point of this message is - I feel bad as I'm not a business and missing out. It implies I can click something to be a business and extend the stated time.

You should not be seeing this message; it's for business customers who have an extended basket duration configured on their account. There is a bug in the backend which means the frontend isn't given enough information to correctly determine whether this should be shown or not, unfortunately. Sorting it out is on the backlog.

I'm unclear what Raileasy is or why it matters

Raileasy is the Merchant of Record (MoR) that takes money off customers and fulfils orders.

clicking the link takes me to Trainsplit's T&Cs (another name that doesn't appear when I go https://tickets.railforums.co.uk/)

I would not say I have a great understanding of Raileasy's branding strategy.

The forum site I think has described itself in the past as "Powered by TrainSplit", and the About page on RailUK Forums's site references TrainSplit.

Very much a personal preference, but a group booking delivered individual Apple Pay tickets which stops you swiping between them when being inspected. Will be interesting to see when the apple pay tickets appear and disappear from my home screen and active wallet - LNER have had all sorts of problems with theirs, there was a long-running bug which made them appear a day early (and scare you!), then they would disappear and archive themselves when the train arrived (great idea, unless you're walking through a barrier 2 minutes later and need to scan!) and currently they're still showing in my active pile a few weeks after travel.

Yeah, this has come up before and I think there's a ticket in the backlog to look at combined links for groups to enable this, but people's approach to group travel does vary. Some prefer to distribute the "Add to wallet" links to group members so they don't have to travel together and can traverse the gateline independently. Other people would prefer to have one person responsible for tickets who can scan everyone through.