ScotRail - New app / website booking engine from 30 July 2026

[styles]

The only way to bring up Wick is to use the CRS code (WCK).

Entering "Wick" shows a list of 10 stations in England and Wales.

I noticed that also.

Maybe they're trying to close stations on the Far North Line again

 

[speedy1]

The only way to bring up Wick is to use the CRS code (WCK).

Entering "Wick" shows a list of 10 stations in England and Wales.

To quote ScotRail's FAQ on the new app:

An exact match not ranking at the top is inexcusable, especially as it's the backend doing the searching.

 

[Sealink]

The only way to bring up Wick is to use the CRS code (WCK).

Entering "Wick" shows a list of 10 stations in England and Wales.

To quote ScotRail's FAQ on the new app:

To be fair, I've had that issue with most apps. Berwick, Wickford, Adwick etc often come up first.

 

[talldave]

Time for the Scotrail management team to venture out for the day, leave the free passes at the office, download the app and experience first hand the life of a paying passenger. Things would get fixed so fast as a result.

However, of all the unlikely things to ever happen on our railways, that's definitely up there as the most unlikely to happen!

 

[kkong]

To be fair, I've had that issue with most apps. Berwick, Wickford, Adwick etc often come up first.

Clearly too difficult to return an exact match to the search term entered, or, failing that, to prioritise Scottish stations in the ScotRail app.

 

[styles]

Time for the Scotrail management team to venture out for the day, leave the free passes at the office, download the app and experience first hand the life of a paying passenger. Things would get fixed so fast as a result.

However, of all the unlikely things to ever happen on our railways, that's definitely up there as the most unlikely to happen!

But that's the strange thing isn't it? I get that some of this may have been performance problems and maybe they hadn't performance tested it; but basic functionality not working is inexcusable - you'd have to have hired a team of developers, QAs, product owners who have never used the railway to think some of this is OK. Even if it were an offshore development team who don't use UK railways; on mobile app stores you can deploy your apps as test versions, either for internal or public testing. There's not really much excuse for not asking for some internal volunteers to install it and use it for their travel for a bit. I'm sure there's plenty of people at ScotRail who were using the old app for their travel before.

The new app also dropped the capability to store saved payment card details, which ScotRail said in advance of the launch they'd hope to add in the future. Well why not just delay the release of the app until you've baked in the basic functionality which existed in the old one?

It just seems so poorly-thought out. If their APIs have been failing due to performance problems I can accept that, loads of people underestimate compute demand and don't invest in simulating the demand with performance tests, but the other stuff makes no sense.

 

[kkong]

Selecting the departure station field when it already contains a value puts the cursor at the start of the existing text.

So if it contains "Wick" and you go to change it and type "Thurso", you'll end up with "ThursoWick".

There is no "x" button to clear the field, so you have to go the end of the text and backspace repeatedly to delete anything that's already there.

 

[Adam Williams]

Entering "Wick" shows a list of 10 stations in England and Wales.

Coming soon to a TrainSplit ad near you....

 

[kkong]

Amusingly, the app states that it's version 2.0.0.

I wonder how bad the previous versions were?

 

[Warrior2852]

David Ross, ScotRail COO, has put out a statement via the ScotRail Twitter account, don't see it on the website yet.

ScotRail (@ScotRail) on X

David Ross, ScotRail Chief Operating Officer, said: “We launched the new ScotRail app and website booking system today – with thousands of people downloading it first thing this morning and successfully buying tickets to travel with us. “Unfortunately, we are experiencing

x.com

David Ross, ScotRail Chief Operating Officer, said:

“We launched the new ScotRail app and website booking system today – with thousands of people downloading it first thing this morning and successfully buying tickets to travel with us.

“Unfortunately, we are experiencing some intermittent technical difficulties with the app – with customers having problems while attempting to purchase tickets.

“We are sorry for the issues customers are experiencing, and I want to reassure them that we are working flat out with our supplier to fix the issue.

“In the meantime, customers who are facing difficulties with the new app can continue to use the previous app to buy tickets, or alternatively use ticket offices or ticket vending machines before they travel.

“I know this has been a frustrating day for some customers and I want to thank them for their patience while our teams work hard to get things up and running.”

Looks like they're keeping the old app working until this is sorted.

 

[alistairlees]

Coming soon to a TrainSplit ad near you....

View attachment 208570

Cheeky!

 

[GregSRHST]

I've done some testing and found all of the issues mentioned above. It's a fair downgrade from the previous app (which also wasn't perfect).

Is there anywhere else I can buy the ScotRail 12 flexi journey ticket? I'm not forking out £200 for something that might not work.

 

[styles]

Is there anywhere else I can buy the ScotRail 12 flexi journey ticket? I'm not forking out £200 for something that might not work.

I believe it's only on the app or on one of the ScotRail Smartcards. Not sure how long one of those would take to arrive if you applied today.

Might be worth contacting ScotRail. According to their latest announcement people can use the old app for now, and I believe there was to be a period where flexipasses on the old app would continue working, but I wouldn't like to risk it!

 

[jazza374]

I've done some testing and found all of the issues mentioned above. It's a fair downgrade from the previous app (which also wasn't perfect).

Is there anywhere else I can buy the ScotRail 12 flexi journey ticket? I'm not forking out £200 for something that might not work.

Flexipass still available on old App. Just checked and was able to get to payment screen.

 

[Furrball]

Wonder when the contract with Trainline for the old app expires?

 

[teaspoon]

It's by no means the biggest issue with the app, but the old one used system fonts, so (in my case) felt like a standard Android app. The new app (and also the booking website) use an Avant Garde-type typeface (seemingly Poppins), rather than ScotRail's corporate font, Officiana. You'd think with a new app you'd make a bit of an effort to make it look and feel a bit more on-brand.

 

[yorkie]

To quote ScotRail's FAQ on the new app:

Why have we made these changes?

This is part of our ongoing work to improve the customer experience by making our digital services more reliable, easier to use and better aligned with customer needs.

Sounds like this new website must be really good, if Scotrail are being accurate and truthful!

So, can any users of the new Scotrail website/app let me know which features it has, which are better than the forum's ticketing site or apps provide, so that I can pass on a list to the providers of the forum site (i.e. Trainsplit)?

 

[styles]

Sounds like this new website must be really good, if Scotrail are being accurate and truthful!

So, can any users of the new Scotrail website/app let me know which features it has, which are better than the forum's ticketing site or apps provide, so that I can pass on a list to the providers of the forum site (i.e. Trainsplit)?

The app icon has a saltire.

 

[walkingsophie]

Do we know what routeing engine the new version uses? Is it still based on Trainline?

 

[alistairlees]

Do we know what routeing engine the new version uses? Is it still based on Trainline?

I answered this in a few earlier posts: SilverRail supplies the TIS (and journey planner)

 

[walkingsophie]

I answered this in a few earlier posts: SilverRail supplies the TIS (and journey planner)

It doesn't seem to match the few SilverRail specific routeings I know about.

 

[kkong]

The app icon has a saltire.

So does the old one - albeit the white and blue are reversed!

 

[styles]

So does the old one - albeit the white and blue are reversed!

Yes but the Raileasy one doesn't

 

[Carntyne]

Genuinely spectacular.

As someone mentioned earlier, that's what happens when our HQ is full of free passes and no one ever has to use the ticket apps or ticket machines.

 

[sannox]

Also might just be me, but the split tickets seems to be only on singles and not as it used to on returns?

 

[superkopite]

Do group station searches work for anyone? I can't seem to find them. They are very handy when you dont know exactly which station you should be looking for. Especially in London and Manchester

 

[Furrball]

Glasgow yes
Manchester no unless you do it by code 115
London yes

 

[kkong]

Manchester no unless you do it by code 115

Ah yes...

This is part of our ongoing work to improve the customer experience by making our digital services more reliable, easier to use and better aligned with customer needs.

I'll now start searching for other random numeric station group codes.

I was also receiving some weird (non) results when searching for "open returns" earlier.

There is also a general note that says that open returns are valid for 30 days, even when the results only offer day return fares.

 

[superkopite]

Glasgow yes
Manchester no unless you do it by code 115
London yes

Thanks.

I got it to work, it's a bizzare implementation. Because of the way the stations list works, it looks like it only ever returns the top 10 best matches to what is entered. "London" or "Manchester" never match in the top 10 with "London (all stations)" or "Manchester (All stations).

As you say, to surface it, you either need to know the code, 115 in the case of Manchester, or type "(" after the city name. "Manchester (" matches the group name and it is returned.

Thats a very interesting approach to UX

 

[kkong]

On the "live trains" page, I can't see anywhere where the operator of each service is shown.

The live trains page for Edinburgh shows departures to "LEV" which I assume is Leven. It's not that new a station!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 31 Jul 2026 ==

Because of the way the stations list works, it looks like it only ever returns the top 10 best matches to what is entered.

It doesn't even do that, as the Wick example shows.