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[Bletchleyite]

Well no, the restrictions apply on any train that will depart from or arrive at a London Terminal within those times, no matter where you board.

This is not quite true because the system cannot implement this. It might be the intention but it won't stop you getting an itinerary (and thus a contract to travel) from Finsbury Park on a Travelcard. And obviously you can go KX-Finsbury Park on the Travelcard element without evening restrictions anyway.

The system can put restrictions on:

1. Where you board
2. Where you alight
3. The final destination of the train

It cannot base a restriction on a point the train has called at before you board it.

They could of course work out the corresponding times for Finsbury Park and add those into the electronic restriction too (as the WCML restriction codes do for Watford Jn), but they have not done so.

 

[MrJeeves]

This is not quite true because the system cannot implement this. It might be the intention but it won't stop you getting an itinerary (and thus a contract to travel) from Finsbury Park on a Travelcard. And obviously you can go KX-Finsbury Park on the Travelcard element without evening restrictions anyway.

I'm not doubting that we won't issue an itinerary (in fact I've got one now), but I also wouldn't want to advise this unless the user in question is certain they know exactly which return service they want, as they would need to stick with that itinerary for their travel to be valid under the contract.

I also would suggest any revenue staff may not like the use of the ticket during evening peak like this, and advise exercising caution.

Either way, I can force the ticket during evening peak by adding via East Croydon for the return leg if this is of any use to the user (though itineraries for this time appear only to be available via STP on our sites).

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[yorkie]

This is a real pain. Take the following example:

Manchester to Accrington
CDR route Bromley Cross £12.50
CDR route Todmorden £12.70
CDR route Any Permitted £12.90
In order to buy the Any Permitted you have to find an itinerary travelling out one way and returning the other. Anything else and you get offered either Bromley Cross or Todmorden and no flexibility.....

You do have the flexibility though; if you got the cheaper fare and came back via Todmorden, you'd be entitled to pay the 10p excess to the Guard on the train (in practice, I've known Guards waive the excess when it's of low value)

For just 40p extra the flexibility is quite useful.

It's not extra flexibility as such; avoiding the hassle of getting an excess (more of a hassle for the Guard than the passenger), yes....

However yes I do accept the point you are making; an 'advanced mode' UI, enabling people to pay more than they need, for a more 'flexible' fare could be useful; I understand there are times when people want to pay more up front (even if they would pay less on the train), such as making expense claims easier, and - although not applicable to this particular journey - there are times when National Rail staff won't issue excesses but you need the excess in order to use the Underground!

Because of these peak restrictions at London Terminals, I'm only offered an Off-Peak (not 'Super') Day Travelcard to Kings Cross, even though the restriction isn't at Finsbury Park so it would save about 2 pounds to travel from there...

I am not sure this will last long, now it's been divulged; I expect GTR's pricing team read this forum

 

[DynamicSpirit]

You do have the flexibility though; if you got the cheaper fare and came back via Todmorden, you'd be entitled to pay the 10p excess to the Guard on the train (in practice, I've known Guards waive the excess when it's of low value)

I'm puzzled by this. If you travel by a route not permitted on your ticket, that looks to me like, traveling without a ticket that's valid on the train you're on, and therefore making yourself liable to a penalty fare. Is there some reason why that logic doesn't apply in this case?

 

[Farigiraf]

I'm not doubting that we won't issue an itinerary (in fact I've got one now), but I also wouldn't want to advise this unless the user in question is certain they know exactly which return service they want, as they would need to stick with that itinerary for their travel to be valid under the contract.

I also would suggest any revenue staff may not like the use of the ticket during evening peak like this, and advise exercising caution.

Either way, I can force the ticket during evening peak by adding via East Croydon for the return leg if this is of any use to the user (though itineraries for this time appear only to be available via STP on our sites).

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View attachment 145820

Thanks for finding this! I will definitely be taking the Thameslink back as I'm coming back from Elephant & Castle, changing onto the Cambridge service at Blackfriars/Farringdon.

If I choose an earlier time, such as the 18:08 Thameslink from Finsbury Park (17:31 from East Croydon) would the route/ticket still be valid? - (edit: I have found it on the journey planner, so then even if there is some questioning, I can just refer them to the journey planner. Railcard added, ticket bought. Thanks for all the help!)

 

[fandroid]

It would be nice to to able to buy "normal" tickets to load into a Smartcard from the Forum's site. By normal I mean not season tickets and not linked to a PAYG system. Currently it looks as if only TOCs who operate PAYG systems are selling such "normal" tickets, and only for their own areas.
I know there are clever ways for the knowledgeable to make better use of these cards, but I'd much rather it were done universally by a mainstream non-TOC ticket seller.

 

[Gaelan]

It would be nice to to able to buy "normal" tickets to load into a Smartcard from the Forum's site. By normal I mean not season tickets and not linked to a PAYG system. Currently it looks as if only TOCs who operate PAYG systems are selling such "normal" tickets, and only for their own areas.
I know there are clever ways for the knowledgeable to make better use of these cards, but I'd much rather it were done universally by a mainstream non-TOC ticket seller.

Out of curiosity, how do the tickets get loaded when you buy online from a TOC? Is it some sort of TOD-style thing at a ticket machine, or a mobile app?

 

[fandroid]

Out of curiosity, how do the tickets get loaded when you buy online from a TOC? Is it some sort of TOD-style thing at a ticket machine, or a mobile app?

My experience is on SWR's touch card. I understand that you can load the tickets at a ticket machine, but I wasn't ever really interested in doing it that way. I've only had the Smartcard since around June 2023 and haven't been terribly adventurous with it. My normal method is to go into the SWR ticket buying app on my phone, where my card is registered to my account. I select the journey and ticket. It then asks for ticket delivery method. It shows "load to Smartcard" in red type. I select that. It then requests me to hold my card next to the phone. It confirms my card (showing part of the card number). Then I pay. Then it comes up with "load ticket on Smartcard" I hold the card by the phone until it says "ticket loaded". There's then an opportunity to check exactly what has been loaded.

That all sounds fairly elaborate, but I've found it to be really quick in practice.

I've got a GWR card too, but have never used it!

I have a National Rail Smartcard app too, which offers a ticket loading facility too. I've never used that. I've used that app only to check the loaded tickets. Their presentation is rather better than SWR's and if asked to show what's on the card I would use that app.

Two big advantages for me - no worries about phone battery expiring (it has happened!) and it's a one ticket/card option for an outboundary travelcard with a Railcard discount, that I can use all the way to and around London, obtained in one transaction at home.

 

[Adam Williams]

I don't think ITSO works with a lot of walk-up tickets. It's not something I know much about, but I think it was acknowledged here before that there's no eTVD (scan database) equivalent for ITSO like we have with barcoded tickets - so there's no way of keeping track of on-board use of the product properly - and as a result of this there's some sort of convention that e.g. period returns shouldn't be enabled in the Retail Control Service for ITSO fulfilment out of fear of revenue loss.

If third-party retailers are even permitted to do Smartcard fulfilment (currently in RCS, only TOCs can fulfill these products to Smartcard as far as I can see) the other matter would be whether a third-party retailer would even be allowed to use the central (i.e. not Scottish) Unicard HOPS, or whether they'd need to use direct fulfilment only (a pain, since you'd presumably then need your own card stock unless you were trying to do host-card-emulation on the customer's phone - I don't like physical products, paper tickets are enough of an annoyance). It's still incredibly unclear how open Apple are willing to be with host-card emulation, though you could probably do it on Android.

 

[OscarH]

@Adam Williams has covered a lot of the key reasons there, ITSO had a lot of promise but the implementation sadly falls short of what could have been done in terms of interoperability and support, particularly from a retail perspective (though its bad all over - Scotland not being interoperable is insanity). You can see some of the issues even in the TOC implementations - a TOC website will only fulfil to their own smartcard for example.

In addition to the above points about fulfilling to it, for journey planning GTR is a complete nightmare as instead of enabling the normal ticket codes for smartcard use they created all new duplicate "Smart" products that are smartcard only, so you need to use different codes depending on the fulfilment method. There is no link to match up these duplicates, so there would be a nightmare of re-engineering/bodging to work around the mess they've made.

Overall there would be so many hoops to jump through for a non-TOC retailer to fulfil to ITSO, if it was even possible at all, to the point where it wouldn't be financially viable for any third party retailer to fulfil to it. In the very unlikely event the system was completely redesigned by RDG/Network Rail/the TOCs maybe it could be reconsidered, I personally agree it would be nice, but until then its not feasible.

Edit: another more fundamental issue is the card capacity - with splits we'd frequently be selling more tickets per passenger than a single card could take

 

[fandroid]

Thank you for the explanations about the difficulties for 3rd party retailers. I'll carry on using my SWR Smartcard for the pure convenience it gives me on journeys into and around London but also continue to use the Forum's ticket service for the fairly frequent other journeys I do across GB generally

 

[embers25]

Is there any way the facility on National Rail for reducing cross London journey time allowance could be added into this site please as I'd much rather buy from this one but only Nat Rail seem to offer this function.

 

[SickyNicky]

Is there any way the facility on National Rail for reducing cross London journey time allowance could be added into this site please as I'd much rather buy from this one but only Nat Rail seem to offer this function.

I'm not sure than an accredited ticket site would be allowed to do that. The itineraries produced would no longer be valid for such things as missed connections due to earlier delays, or indeed for Delay Repay.

 

[Adam Williams]

I'm not sure than an accredited ticket site would be allowed to do that. The itineraries produced would no longer be valid for such things as missed connections due to earlier delays, or indeed for Delay Repay.

You can do this today, via NRE and then use the OJP handover button to buy it online via LNER with the reduced connection times. If the TOCs are allowed to do it, I see no reason anyone else should be prevented from it

 

[SickyNicky]

You can do this today, via NRE and then use the OJP handover button to buy it online via LNER with the reduced connection times. If the TOCs are allowed to do it, I see no reason anyone else should be prevented from it

It might cause unnecessary grief (and possibly cost) for the customer in the event of delays, though.

 

[embers25]

You could select any retailer before but the new NRE interface is screwed up and it chooses the retailer for you without giving you a choice anyway more. Not sure that's even legal but NRE aren't known for worrying about that. Obviously due to loyalty points etc it picking the retailer and removing the old drop down choice is a real pain when you need this reduced connection time.

 

[87electric]

I had bought Advance Single ticket for 09:59 Peterborough to York (LNER) and an Advance Single ticket 20:01 York to Peterborough (LNER to Doncaster, connect to 20:49 on EMR) for Tuesday 14th November via Rail UK Tickets (Trainsplit). LNER cancelled the 09:59 and it was taken out of the timetable the night before because of the high winds in the Yorkshire area. I’m sure some trains were also displaced especially as this was a usual Class 91 turn.
I decided not to travel. More possible disruption and potentially crowded trains don’t appeal.
I contacted Trainsplit about claiming for the cancelled outward ticket. Unfortunately, I’ve been told that my claim will not be valid because although I’ve uploaded images/cut images of that ticket, I also need to upload the 20:01 ticket as well. This was explained as essential for the RDG auditing process they go through. I can not find that ticket at all! It’s driven me mad trying to find it.
I accept I’ve lost the inbound money, but the outbound? Even though they are separate Advances?

 

[Adam Williams]

I had bought Advance Single ticket for 09:59 Peterborough to York (LNER) and an Advance Single ticket 20:01 York to Peterborough (LNER to Doncaster, connect to 20:49 on EMR) for Tuesday 14th November via Rail UK Tickets (Trainsplit). LNER cancelled the 09:59 and it was taken out of the timetable the night before because of the high winds in the Yorkshire area. I’m sure some trains were also displaced especially as this was a usual Class 91 turn.
I decided not to travel. More possible disruption and potentially crowded trains don’t appeal.
I contacted Trainsplit about claiming for the cancelled outward ticket. Unfortunately, I’ve been told that my claim will not be valid because although I’ve uploaded images/cut images of that ticket, I also need to upload the 20:01 ticket as well. This was explained as essential for the RDG auditing process they go through. I can not find that ticket at all! It’s driven me mad trying to find it.
I accept I’ve lost the inbound money, but the outbound? Even though they are separate Advances?

I'm not entirely convinced the request for a partial refund on just the one ticket you were able to evidence as being unused was as well communicated in the original support ticket thread as it has subsequently been here

With the additional context, I've asked one of the customer support reps to reach back out to you, because I think we should be able to refund the ticket you did provide photos of. I know it's not particularly customer-friendly to not give a full refund under these circumstances, but TrainSplit's refunds do get audited by RDG and they have to be done by the book.

Perhaps a cautionary tale for the thread too: ToD tickets should be treated like cash and kept safe until used for travel or refunded. The flow was enabled for E-Ticket fulfillment, but the decision was taken to opt for ToD fulfilment instead and the end result is that the customer is out of pocket and the refund options are much more limited than they needed to be.

 

[MrJeeves]

Perhaps a cautionary tale for the thread too: ToD tickets should be treated like cash and kept safe until used for travel or refunded.

Or not collected until time of travel!

 

[Adam Williams]

Or not collected until time of travel!

Yes, though then you have fun and games when the only machine at your rural station fails to print them...

 

[87electric]

I'm not entirely convinced the request for a partial refund on just the one ticket you were able to evidence as being unused was as well communicated in the original support ticket thread as it has subsequently been here

With the additional context, I've asked one of the customer support reps to reach back out to you, because I think we should be able to refund the ticket you did provide photos of. I know it's not particularly customer-friendly to not give a full refund under these circumstances, but TrainSplit's refunds do get audited by RDG and they have to be done by the book.

Perhaps a cautionary tale for the thread too: ToD tickets should be treated like cash and kept safe until used for travel or refunded. The flow was enabled for E-Ticket fulfillment, but the decision was taken to opt for ToD fulfilment instead and the end result is that the customer is out of pocket and the refund options are much more limited than they needed to be.

Adam, thank you very much for helping me out with this. A refund has been agreed upon for the outbound journey. And I accept that as I can not find the inbound ticket that I have to forfeit that money.
I’m mainly a ToD person. Old school. I also do e-ticketing. In fact I’m signed up to the LNER one click delay repay and it works a treat. Immediate, in fact. But I go where the deals are and Trainsplit via UK Rail works for me.

 

[ainsworth74]

But I go where the deals are and Trainsplit via UK Rail works for me.

And we're happy to have you even with the gentle pokes towards e-tickets

 

[Kite159]

I was playing around last night with fares from Crewe to Manchester Piccadilly (noticing that the TfW only fare has been hiked to be a pointless saving) with the website only selling either flexible tickets for the TfW services (or advances for Northern). However the Avanti TVM at Crewe happily sold an advance for the 08;32 Manchester service.

Any ideas why those advances wouldn't be offered by the website? In hindsight I should have probably checked NRE to see what that suggested as I've come across similar either in the year with South Eastern advances not showing on TrainSplit

 

[MikeWh]

Why is it not possible to sell tickets for different people with different railcards, or none for some. My wife and I can't be the only couple where I have a senior railcard and she doesn't. I tried booking tickets for a trip from Crayford to Taunton in January. Had I used the forum site I'm guessing I'd have had to make two separate purchases, and potentially had to play with the seat selector for one of them. I'm sorry but gwr.com sorted it all in one easy transaction, so they got the business.

 

[MrJeeves]

You could add each journey to your basket then do the seat selector at the same time before checkout, but it's not an ideal process and we know that.

 

[Adam Williams]

Why is it not possible to sell tickets for different people with different railcards, or none for some. My wife and I can't be the only couple where I have a senior railcard and she doesn't. I tried booking tickets for a trip from Crayford to Taunton in January. Had I used the forum site I'm guessing I'd have had to make two separate purchases, and potentially had to play with the seat selector for one of them. I'm sorry but gwr.com sorted it all in one easy transaction, so they got the business.

We can offer exactly what GWR does today, but not without sacrificing the split ticketing support given how the journey planner currently works, so we don't.

It's on the roadmap (and has been for a while) but it's less trivial than you might think at first glance. As a thought experiment, let's say you have four passengers and two of them have a Senior Railcard. One of them has a 16-25 Railcard. When considering what fares to sell:

• For the 16-25 railcard holder, it might make sense to split at the first station call after 10am and sell an initial ticket covering the first few stops with the public discount (i.e. no railcard) if the fare would fall below the minimum fare.
• But if we're travelling from .. I don't know, Banbury, we might be able to apply the Senior Railcard discount much earlier than 10am, so we might split somewhere else for these passengers.
• ....but, we might well be able to benefit overall from Groupsave if we sacrifice the passengers using their railcard at some points in their journey (remember: one of our passengers isn't entitled to a Railcard). This means the entire group needs to be travelling together and have a consistent fare starting location and ending location so that at least 3 of them are using this discount status code at all times.

You don't just have the basics of which fare to sell when for the best price to consider: Splitting at different points for different customers has a detrimental impact on your ability to secure seats together for the passengers with different splits, too, because the industry's reservation system has no facility for saying "I have these four tickets, let me book this one seat for my entire journey on the train".

 

[miklcct]

Hello @Adam Williams I appreciate the nearby station feature of the updated app, but how can I switch the distance shown from miles, which is not an international standard unit, to km please?

 

[Adam Williams]

On iOS we use the user's configured locale measurement display preference to determine whether to show miles or km.

I don't believe there is an equivalent on Android, so this would necessitate adding an in-app preference. I'm sympathetic, I think the UK's current split of imperial and metric units is a mess to say the least but when we developed it we went with the most broadly understandable option (given the app's audience) with the assumption that most distances displayed would be greater than a few hundred metres:



So, it's not a "no" and I'll open a ticket for it on the backlog. It's not going to be something that gets done next week without a few more users asking for it, though.

 

[Benjwri]

I don't believe there is an equivalent on Android

I believe it's possible with LocaleData.getMeasurementSystem, but obviously if that's possible to use depends on how TransSplits app is made.

Returns the measurement system used in the locale specified by the locale.

 

[Adam Williams]

I believe it's possible with LocaleData.getMeasurementSystem, but obviously if that's possible to use depends on how TransSplits app is made.

Interesting, thanks! And it's a proper native app, Raileasy don't do glorified-WebViews-as-apps and have no plans to start, my view is that you get really awful UX if you go down that route and 9 times out of 10 it's obvious that you have done it.

I assume that this would be helpful for e.g. users from France booking a break in London, but less helpful to @miklcct because I don't think you can override the locale's default with your own preference?