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

[Haywain]

I think there's a good chance that is exactly what they are trying to do!

Euston to Nuneaton has to be competitive with WMT so relatively cheap Advance tiers are made available. They don't want Nuneaton to Stockport passengers (few of them as there are) to take XC/WMT so they make that cheap too.

But they don't want "high-margin" EUS-MAN passengers benefiting from either of the above (and certainly not both). Hence they might limit the availability of Advances in unexpected ways.

I'm not sure that is the case as I've had Euston to Manchester with splits at Nuneaton a few times now, and even on this occasion it seems to be just that both were the same ticket type that was the problem. I think it's more that only one of the ticket type was available on the train and it could have been for either leg, but never both, and the two separate legs were cheaper than the through journey.

 

[Adam Williams]

I wouldn't say it's deliberately aimed at splitting, a lot of train operators do it out of a (perhaps misguided) attempt to protect seats for those doing long-distance travel by avoiding wasting it on local journeys - e.g. today I did MAN->RUG and was able to book a seat even at the last-minute on a 9-car Pendo; that's a good thing. The nature of how the RARS interface has been designed though, means that the overall passenger origin and destination is not available when this logic is applied and the passenger is using multiple tickets to make their journey, so they'll be treated like a passenger doing much shorter journeys.

The irony of course is that there would be far fewer problems with seats getting taken up unnecessarily if the services weren't incorrectly marked as "Compulsory Reservations" in the timetable.

The problem with bucket nesting is that it causes real problems with caching too, because suddenly it's not just "there's availability 5 between station 1 and station 2", it's "there's availability 3 for fare A between station 1 and station 2 together with fare B between station 2 and station 3" and it's not remotely practical to retrieve that information to put in a cache for possible combinations.

This is one of the main drivers behind musical chairs on CrossCountry services as well. CrossCountry try and automatically allocate certain passengers travelling between certain station pairs (which may be indicative of having luggage) to seats near luggage racks. It's a clever thing to try and do, but the minute you have a split somewhere, it can mean it becomes effectively impossible to get the same seat throughout, because of the way the seats have been artificially "segmented".

Side issue: is there a way of diverting notifications to a third party when tickets are bought for someone else?

The booking can be moved to someone else's account on request and will then appear in their app/send them notifications, but that's all the backend supports today. Various planned pieces of work to improve the experience in that area.

 

[trainophile]

Drat, for the second time recently I've accidentally booked the default e-tickets on some version of the RailEasy interface - not sure if it's the one that links to the forum as I just picked it from the "frequently visited" icons on my Home Screen. Last time the Trainsplit guys very kindly changed them for paper tickets before I'd uploaded them to my wallet, but this time I'll just stick with it and have walleted them. It's all part of my e-confidence building! I don't find the new layout as easy to remember to change to paper tickets as the previous versions, and I wish it didn't keep reverting to e-tickets if you decide to add another journey before checking out.

Went from Broughty Ferry to Aberdeen and back on Friday, and as there's no ticket office or machine at B/F I had to use e-tickets. What with the splitting at Stonehouse, the doubling back at Dundee, and there being two of us it was quite a challenge getting them sorted and I was worried in case I'd missed uploading any, but all went to plan thank goodness, although there weren't many ticket checks anyway so I didn't have to find them more than once or twice.

I will persevere!

 

[Adam Williams]

Drat, for the second time recently I've accidentally booked the default e-tickets on some version of the RailEasy interface - not sure if it's the one that links to the forum as I just picked it from the "frequently visited" icons on my Home Screen. Last time the Trainsplit guys very kindly changed them for paper tickets before I'd uploaded them to my wallet, but this time I'll just stick with it and have walleted them. It's all part of my e-confidence building! I don't find the new layout as easy to remember to change to paper tickets as the previous versions, and I wish it didn't keep reverting to e-tickets if you decide to add another journey before checking out.

The team can re-issue them as paper tickets if you prefer, it's really up to you.

If you managed the E-Tickets last week without too much trouble though, that's good news!

I wish it didn't keep reverting to e-tickets if you decide to add another journey before checking out

I'll see if there's anything that can be done about this. It ought to be able to keep it remembered at least for that basket (or that browser tab).

 

[trainophile]

Cheers Adam. No I'll continue to drag myself into the 21st century! It should be a light luggage trip, and mostly barrier-free, so I'm sure it will be fine.

 

[WildNorthlands]

Sorry but not much use to me as I can’t reserve a bike with my booking as far as I can see.

 

[ollyrogers]

Hi all,

There appears to be a reload error when proceeding to make the payment for some tickets I’m attempting to book.

As soon as I try to input card details or select Apple Pay, the page reloads into an error state (see below), and I am unable to proceed with the purchase.


Image showing the completed basket of tickets


Image showing the webpage refreshing itself when inputting/ selecting payment type and details


Image showing final result of the reload into a broken page

 

[JoshD14]

Please can you email in to TrainSplit support (or use the support option on the booking site) with this info so we can investigate further? This sounds similar to a Safari bug we were aware of but that was only Safari 16 and also couldn't reproduce. Given you say it happens when you try to enter card details or select Apple Pay, it does sound suspicious on our payment provider's end, but yeah, drop us an email and I can investigate further

 

[ollyrogers]

Thanks Josh,

All done and email sent. I managed to workaround the issue by returning back one page, re-doing my seat selection and proceeding normally. Happily the tickets are now booked correctly.

 

[talldave]

The Bedford disruption banner has a cross but won't close when I touch it. Samsung browser on S25.

 

[signed]

The Bedford disruption banner has a cross but won't close when I touch it. Samsung browser on S25.

Can reproduce on Safari in iOS 26.5.1

 

[JoshD14]

The close button should be working now

 

[talldave]

The close button should be working now

Brilliant, thank you!

 

[Howardh]

Deleted - found the answer!

 

[Haywain]

How do I go about doing that on this site?

On the website go into 'My journeys' and against the relevant journey select 'Request a refund'.

 

[styles]

Bit of a nit-picky point, but on the forum site if you choose tickets on departure it says you'll need a physical card to collect them. This isn't true of many TVMs any more.

 

[MrJeeves]

Bit of a nit-picky point, but on the forum site if you choose tickets on departure it says you'll need a physical card to collect them. This isn't true of many TVMs any more.

It's not, but there are still that still need one, and we don't want someone who uses one of those to then complain we didn't warn them.

Once TfL's TVM suppliers get their act together, we can remove that messaging.

 

[styles]

It's not, but there are still that still need one, and we don't want someone who uses one of those to then complain we didn't warn them.

Once TfL's TVM suppliers get their act together, we can remove that messaging.

Yeah I just wonder if a tweak in wording may be helpful to say you may need a physical card to collect; or even better (but more difficult to account for in code) setting the text based on the station selected for ToD.

 

[Watershed]

or even better (but more difficult to account for in code) setting the text based on the station selected for ToD.

Some stations have multiple types of TVMs, only some of which comply with the updated no-card accreditation rules, so it would be tricky to give good advice for such situations whilst making sure the list stays up to date.

For now I think it's sensible advice for any retailer to give.

 

[Adam Williams]

I'm not sure even RDG have a completely accurate picture of what stations have what TVMs running what versions of software.

 

[Watershed]

I'm not sure even RDG have a completely accurate picture of what stations have what TVMs running what versions of software.

Theoretically I think sales should be recorded under separate accreditation versions' SDCI records depending on the software being used. But I'm not convinced that happens in practice.

 

[OscarH]

Theoretically I think sales should be recorded under separate accreditation versions' SDCI records depending on the software being used. But I'm not convinced that happens in practice.

I've found TVMs reporting that they're at a completely different station run by a different TOC (on the other side of the country) before, so I have very little faith about what's in those SDCI+ records

 

[styles]

Some stations have multiple types of TVMs, only some of which comply with the updated no-card accreditation rules, so it would be tricky to give good advice for such situations whilst making sure the list stays up to date.

For now I think it's sensible advice for any retailer to give.

Even given this, I don't see why it doesn't say something along the lines of, "A physical card may be required."? It's untrue to say that they will be required.

 

[ainsworth74]

Even given this, I don't see why it doesn't say something along the lines of, "A physical card may be required."? It's untrue to say that they will be required.

Because the public are idiots and you have to deal with the lowest common denominator. Would be my assumption...

 

[Adam Williams]

Yes, the minute you use "may" someone won't bring a card and won't be able to collect - and then will complain that the page didn't warn them sufficiently.

Really it's ridiculous that there are still TVMs that haven't complied with the accreditation requirement. Getting that fixed so that retailers can give definitive advice is the answer here.

 

[styles]

Fair enough, I'll back down from my crusade!

I did say it was a minor point, but I do think it's a bit misleading still. I say that as someone who has actually experienced the problem of paying using a digital card then being unable to collect tickets and even finding ticket office staff begrudging in resolving the issue. I'm glad to see TVMs moving with the times.

 

[Adam Williams]

Fair enough, I'll back down from my crusade!

I did say it was a minor point, but I do think it's a bit misleading still. I say that as someone who has actually experienced the problem of paying using a digital card then being unable to collect tickets and even finding ticket office staff begrudging in resolving the issue. I'm glad to see TVMs moving with the times.

Given you can handle the truth, we can do

(user == styles) ? "is unlikely to require" : "will require"

 

[styles]

Given you can handle the truth, we can do

(user == styles) ? "is unlikely to require" : "will require"

I'll buy you 3 pints of drinks up to 6% ABV if you implement this.

 

[8ace]

Given you can handle the truth, we can do

(user == styles) ? "is unlikely to require" : "will require"

From a fellow software engineer this really tickled me for some reason

 

[Adam Williams]

I did deploy it