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[Egg Centric]

I *may* need to do a complicated swap of various advances - is discussing how to do this better in this thread or in trip planning?

(The TLDR is that I'm down south twice in a week and it might be that I need to be down south in between those two times in which case it's probably better to merge into one journey but it very much depends on your policy on moving advances; going by the letter of the advances rules as I understand them I am - well my employer is - totally stuffed . But I'm not sure how much discretion you have)

 

[yorkie]

I *may* need to do a complicated swap of various advances - is discussing how to do this better in this thread or in trip planning?

(The TLDR is that I'm down south twice in a week and it might be that I need to be down south in between those two times in which case it's probably better to merge into one journey but it very much depends on your policy on moving advances; going by the letter of the advances rules as I understand them I am - well my employer is - totally stuffed . But I'm not sure how much discretion you have)

The admin fee to change Advance tickets applies for the booking, not on a per ticket basis.

 

[Egg Centric]

The admin fee to change Advance tickets applies for the booking, not on a per ticket basis.

To be specific - I am currently the proud owner of the following tickets for that week:

28 Feb 2025 - Durham 16:42 - Kings Cross 19:38 (1st)
02 March 2025 - Kings Cross 16:00 - York 17:50 (1st)
02 March 2025 - York 17:53 - Newcastle 19:47 (1st)
05 March 2025 - Hexham 14:55 - Carlisle 15:44 (Std)
05 March 2025: Carlisle 16:07 - Birmingham New Street 19:07 (Std Premium)
07 March 2025: Birmingham New 16:07 - Carlisle 17:03 (Std Premium)
07 March 2025 - Carlisle 17:24 - Hexham 18:19 (Std)

The bold ones though - due to circumstances looks like I don't need them. Instead what I need is 2 First Class or Std Premium ticket from Watford to Birmingham on 5th March, and 1 First Class or Std Premium ticket from Brimingham to Watford on 7th March (as I will be getting this for one other person).

Obviously there's no right to "change" advances like the above, as it's more than a bit of a stretch to even call this a change - basically they're completely different tickets. However because I don't know how the tickets are settled financially with RDG etc I don't know if it's a reasonable ask to request this (I would define it as a reasonable ask if it caused no material loss to Raileasy). I assume that it's not a reasonable ask and I'm basically "stuck" with them and need to buy the other Watford-Birmingham tickets mentioned but figure I should check.

Assuming I'm right about it not being practicable to convert them, there is a secondary question of what do to with them that may be better in another thread. E.g. is there a sensible date to move the more expensive ones to with the intent of moving them again subsequently. Or perhaps are there forum members who would like them (e.g. know any who live in York for 2 March ones )?

 

[yorkie]

To be specific - I am currently the proud owner of the following tickets for that week:

28 Feb 2025 - Durham 16:42 - Kings Cross 19:38 (1st)
02 March 2025 - Kings Cross 16:00 - York 17:50 (1st)
02 March 2025 - York 17:53 - Newcastle 19:47 (1st)
05 March 2025 - Hexham 14:55 - Carlisle 15:44 (Std)
05 March 2025: Carlisle 16:07 - Birmingham New Street 19:07 (Std Premium)
07 March 2025: Birmingham New 16:07 - Carlisle 17:03 (Std Premium)
07 March 2025 - Carlisle 17:24 - Hexham 18:19 (Std)

When you say "tickets", are these the journeys that are booked? If not, what are the journeys? Were they all booked in one transaction? Are you wanting to move the dates of the journeys?

There is a lot of text in your post, but the key information isn't present or is unclear.

 

[Mike395]

Just to give some context to @yorkie ‘s reply - outside of disruption retailers can only action a Change of Advance under a very specific set of circumstances. Essentially the journey (or the ticket if just swapping an individual Advance within the booking) origin/destination has to be identical. The industry carries out periodic audits to ensure the rules are being followed so Raileasy has very little room for deviation from that.

Looking at your post above I’m struggling to see anything that you could usefully do within the confines of the above rules.

 

[Egg Centric]

Just to give some context to @yorkie ‘s reply - outside of disruption retailers can only action a Change of Advance under a very specific set of circumstances. Essentially the journey (or the ticket if just swapping an individual Advance within the booking) origin/destination has to be identical. The industry carries out periodic audits to ensure the rules are being followed so Raileasy has very little room for deviation from that.

Looking at your post above I’m struggling to see anything that you could usefully do within the confines of the above rules.

That "solves" that then - shame but assumed it'd be something like that.

 

[Foxcover]

I don’t think this has been raised before (I did a quick thread search) - but a unique selling point might be be if you could put a flag on the different options showing trains with high cancellation rates?

For example, it would alert me that the (otherwise attractive-looking) advance on the TPE 0812 from Liverpool to Glasgow on a Saturday actually had a 50% train cancellation rate. Is that data feed available and can you use it? I can see it would be a big draw to the site - and also potentially drive some better behaviours in TOCs!

 

[yorkie]

I don’t think this has been raised before (I did a quick thread search) - but a unique selling point might be be if you could put a flag on the different options showing trains with high cancellation rates?

For example, it would alert me that the (otherwise attractive-looking) advance on the TPE 0812 from Liverpool to Glasgow on a Saturday actually had a 50% cancellation rate. Is that data feed available and can you use it?

Out of interest, does anyone have a list of which trains have high cancellation rates, and also what sort of rate would be considered high? I suspect this could be a lot of work for relatively very little gain.

I can see it would be a big draw to the site - and also potentially drive some better behaviours in TOCs!

I can absolutely guarantee it would not influence behaviour of TOCs.

Furthermore, TOCs do not like to admit that sites such as ours exist; in fact, companies such as LNER make claims that are misleading, such as:

When you book direct you can take control of your journey and bag the best spot onboard

Get cheaper travel when you book your ticket direct with us

We allow seat selection, and we're often cheaper than the LNER site.

No-one has the ability and desire to make companies like LNER change their behaviour, and they are certainly not going to do so voluntarily.

 

[Adam Williams]

I actually don't hate the idea but as @yorkie suggests, it'd be worth looking at some data first (and probably sales data as well) to determine what portion of customers would benefit from knowing their train had a high average cancellation rate (and I guess a reasonable follow-up question is, "How often is there a good alternative the customer could take instead?")

 

[Egg Centric]

I actually don't hate the idea but as @yorkie suggests, it'd be worth looking at some data first (and probably sales data as well) to determine what portion of customers would benefit from knowing their train had a high average cancellation rate (and I guess a reasonable follow-up question is, "How often is there a good alternative the customer could take instead?")

I've mentioned before those of us on expenses often *want* a delay (so we can get delay repay and thus essentially be paid to take the train) - so depending on how great a proportion of your users that is that's a population that would definitely benefit.

I'm not sure how useful the historical data would be though?

 

[Foxcover]

I admit I’m biased from recent experience - if I’d known how cancellation-prone the TPEs out of Liverpool to Glasgow were, I’d have either got an open ticket to let me use the next available any-operator train, or have booked a split advance with Avanti (as reliability is better and they have more options if one is cancelled).

I got the 50pc figure from the recent train times website; in terms of how much use it would be, there’s quite a lot of anecdote on the forums on the frustrations with regularly cancelled trains. It wouldn’t be something to spend the whole development budget on, but if it was a quick win to add a RAG (red amber green) status to a journey based on the last say 12 weeks performance, then that would instantly guide me away from my mistake, or reassure me that my choice was likely to be a good one!

Airline sites like flight stats give performance stats for specific flights so it’s obviously useful in that context.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 Mar 2025 ==

I've mentioned before those of us on expenses often *want* a delay (so we can get delay repay and thus essentially be paid to take the train) - so depending on how great a proportion of your users that is that's a population that would definitely benefit.

I'm not sure how useful the historical data would be though?

I can relate to that - as it happened I ended up getting full delay repay both ways from TPE, but it did mess the family about and caused stress/worry about what a 397 would be like with 3 trainloads on it - it was a bad afternoon at Glasgow for the 397 fleet!

 

[signed]

There seems to be a bug with Avanti on Sundays

I was looking at Euston to Llandulno

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All connections involving Avanti show as sold out (because of the fake compulsory reservation probably), however they show as available on Avanti's website (though without advance)

Does this have something to do with the strike action?

The following on :

• March 30
• April 6,13

 

[Adam Williams]

No availability for us on those services.

however they show as available on Avanti's website (though without advance)

That's very interesting.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 4 Mar 2025 ==

Looks like pico4uk fails later on in the booking flow, I imagine it doesn't bother checking availability for walk-ups at the search results stage:

 

[styles]

Out of interest, does anyone have a list of which trains have high cancellation rates, and also what sort of rate would be considered high? I suspect this could be a lot of work for relatively very little gain.

I can absolutely guarantee it would not influence behaviour of TOCs.

Furthermore, TOCs do not like to admit that sites such as ours exist; in fact, companies such as LNER make claims that are misleading, such as:


We allow seat selection, and we're often cheaper than the LNER site.

No-one has the ability and desire to make companies like LNER change their behaviour, and they are certainly not going to do so voluntarily.

Not a list per se, but this site appears to cache delay data: https://www.recenttraintimes.co.uk

For example, for Edinburgh to Warrington Bank Quay Mon-Fri: https://www.recenttraintimes.co.uk/Home/Search?Op=Srch&Fr=Edinburgh+(EDB)&To=Warrington+Bank+Quay+(WBQ)&TimTyp=A&TimDay=A&Days=Wk&TimPer=4w&dtFr=&dtTo=&ShwTim=AvAr&MxArCl=5&TOC=All&ArrSta=5&MetAvg=Mea&MetSpr=RT&MxScDu=&MxSvAg=10&MnScCt=2

They provide this explanation of their data sources:

The information shown on Recent Train Times is sourced from Network Rail via their Open Data Feeds (which sources data from the Network Rail TRUST system), augmented with additional data sourced from the Rail Delivery Group via their Darwin system.

These data feeds provide real time information about train movements across the rail network. The two data sources serve different purposes - TRUST / the Network Rail Open Data Feeds are a record of actual train running vs. schedule. TRUST receives most train running data in real-time but some data can be input hours or days later. The Open Data Feeds also have a few gaps, e.g. skipped station stops are not accurately described. To fill these gaps, Recent Train Times uses the Darwin Data Feed. Darwin focusses on providing real-time information to passengers and for example does include skipped station stops.

Whether they query those web services in real time for searches, or periodically cache the data (I think it's this, given they say when their data is valid 'up to', e.g. 04/03/2025 20:27 when I searched at 20:36).

Funnily enough, I was just thinking that if you were cash poor but time rich, knowing which services are most likely to net you delay repay may be useful (though you certainly wouldn't advertise it for this purpose!).

 

[signed]

I imagine it doesn't bother checking availability for walk-ups at the search results stage:

That makes sense, thanks for having a look

 

[Egg Centric]

A nice feature would be to put a few tickets you've bought, perhaps at different times, together into a single itinerary. I appreciate in theory if the tickets were correctly sold and requirements like connection time were all met this isn't necessary, but it would perhaps help with arguments if things go wrong.

(Was just thinking this cause on Friday I have 3 different tickets from 3 different bookings and while I'd be surprised if there was an issue during the journey if one were delayed this extra backup would be nice)

Especially handy atm when you have to book Standard Premium separately.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Mar 2025 ==

Funnily enough, I was just thinking that if you were cash poor but time rich, knowing which services are most likely to net you delay repay may be useful (though you certainly wouldn't advertise it for this purpose!).

That describes most travelling on expenses (at least in relative terms even if theoretically not bothered about a few hundred quid)

 

[andythebrave]

I was just wondering if it may be possible for a user to specify ticketing preferences at an individual account level such that it isn't necessary to select 'other options' to get to ticket on departure.
It's a very minor thing but it would make my over complicated life just a tad simpler.

 

[Adam Williams]

A nice feature would be to put a few tickets you've bought, perhaps at different times, together into a single itinerary. I appreciate in theory if the tickets were correctly sold and requirements like connection time were all met this isn't necessary, but it would perhaps help with arguments if things go wrong.

(Was just thinking this cause on Friday I have 3 different tickets from 3 different bookings and while I'd be surprised if there was an issue during the journey if one were delayed this extra backup would be nice)

Especially handy atm when you have to book Standard Premium separately.

This would definitely be nice, I think as part of some sort of wider "what can I do with these tickets" feature.

I was just wondering if it may be possible for a user to specify ticketing preferences at an individual account level such that it isn't necessary to select 'other options' to get to ticket on departure.

I'm afraid there's deliberately some friction here to dissuade use of ToD, and that's not likely to change. ToD is more expensive and a bit of a nightmare from a support perspective with print failures not handled correctly by various vendors, machines being out-of-service, vendors not following the spec properly etc.

There are a number of people at Raileasy that would like to withdraw ToD entirely or charge a fee for it. The current status quo is a reasonable middle ground; choice isn't taken away but we're not doing anything to make it easy either.

Every ToD booking made on the forum ticketing site that could've been E-Ticketed ultimately means less money going to support the forum, as well.

 

[andythebrave]

I'm afraid there's deliberately some friction here to dissuade use of ToD, and that's not likely to change. ToD is more expensive and a bit of a nightmare from a support perspective with print failures not handled correctly by various vendors, machines being out-of-service, vendors not following the spec properly etc.

There are a number of people at Raileasy that would like to withdraw ToD entirely or charge a fee for it. The current status quo is a reasonable middle ground; choice isn't taken away but we're not doing anything to make it easy either.

Every ToD booking made on the forum ticketing site that could've been E-Ticketed ultimately means less money going to support the forum, as well.

I quite understand and will, if funds permit, always make a donation on the relevant screen when purchasing lower value tickets with no split saving.

 

[Egg Centric]

I quite understand and will, if funds permit, always make a donation on the relevant screen when purchasing lower value tickets with no split saving.

A useful, general purpose way of achieving stuff like this is a tool called tampermonkey. If you're technically minded you may want to investigate that. Given what was said above I won't provide explicit instructions (which could go out of date any time anyway) but we'd be talking writing less than 10 lines of javascript and you'd be sorted (till the page changed anyway e.g. by removing that handy data-testid attribute )

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 7 Mar 2025 ==

Every ToD booking made on the forum ticketing site that could've been E-Ticketed ultimately means less money going to support the forum, as well.

Speaking of donations, a "round up to nearest 10p / £1 / £5 / £10" option might be a good idea. It might also be a good idea to have a round up/down to nearest 5p thing *anyway* for expense purposes because finance teams who know train tickets don't end in 23p have been known to query the split "share of saving". Or even just round it down to the nearest 5p full stop.

 

[RyanOPlasty]

Am I missing something? https://tickets-beta.railforums.co.uk seems to have fewer options than https://tickets.railforums.co.uk/.

I find that I mostly don't use the beta site when I wish to use Vias or Avoids.

A beta is normally provided for testing before introduction into production. Is it the intention that the original ( and more functional) ticket site will be withdrawn?

 

[Adam Williams]

Am I missing something?

Yes, click the cog icon.

 

[RyanOPlasty]

Yes, click the cog icon.

View attachment 175914

Thanks

 

[nw-sparks]

I think I've missed something obvious, but this seems a bit strange so here goes:
Yesterday a friend visiting me used my computer to get tickets for a single journey Huyton to Gloucester via Hereford this morning. I recommended "our" new ticketing site.
He wanted flexible tickets and was pleased with the offer which was:

• Huyton to Roby, Anytime Day Single, 1 adult @ £1.70 , Senior Railcard
• Roby to Lydney, Anytime Single, 1 adult @ £40.25 , Senior Railcard (1)
• Lydney to Gloucester, Anytime Day Single, 1 adult @ £6.85 , Senior Railcard

"That's a bit odd" I commented, "I thought the fares from Roby were always the same as from Huyton, obviously not". We joked that he could walk the extra quarter mile to Roby and save £1.70

Looking at BRfares after he's gone I see that a Huyton to Lydney Anytime Single is the same price as the one from Roby, so why the extra ticket? I think all the routings are the same for Roby and Huyton?

 

[yorkie]

I think I've missed something obvious, but this seems a bit strange so here goes:
Yesterday a friend visiting me used my computer to get tickets for a single journey Huyton to Gloucester via Hereford this morning. I recommended "our" new ticketing site.
He wanted flexible tickets and was pleased with the offer which was:

• Huyton to Roby, Anytime Day Single, 1 adult @ £1.70 , Senior Railcard
• Roby to Lydney, Anytime Single, 1 adult @ £40.25 , Senior Railcard (1)
• Lydney to Gloucester, Anytime Day Single, 1 adult @ £6.85 , Senior Railcard

"That's a bit odd" I commented, "I thought the fares from Roby were always the same as from Huyton, obviously not". We joked that he could walk the extra quarter mile to Roby and save £1.70

Looking at BRfares after he's gone I see that a Huyton to Lydney Anytime Single is the same price as the one from Roby, so why the extra ticket? I think all the routings are the same for Roby and Huyton?

Can you please provide a link to a search query?

 

[nw-sparks]

It seems to happen next Sunday as well

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Then change the filters to Walk-ups only and pick either of the £48.80 suggestions.

 

[jp4712]

I seem to be having a log-in issue. I try to create an account, and the screen tells me that the email address I've quoted already has an account. So I try to log in with the password I always use for this kind of account, and it tells me the username or password aren't recognised. No problem, I'll reset the password - but the mail to do this never arrives and yes I've checked junk mail.

I don't think I've had an account in the past, but I have given my email address so tickets can be sent to me. So is there a problem, or is the password reset getting lost in a mail filter?

If anyone is in a position to look at this, my email address resembles this: (redacted - Trainsplit has made contact)

EDIT: well, it took less than five minutes for an admin to get back to me and help! This is superlative service, thank you.

 

[Adam Williams]

We've dropped you an email, @jp4712

 

[signed]

I can reproduce the error message likely seen by @TheManOnThe172 (is it the same)

List of last stations in Zone 6?

I am helping someone with a Disabled Freedom Pass plan a journey from Euston to Tring. Trainsplit.com gives an error for this journey so I am trying ring to work it out for myself. Buying a Boundary Zone 6 ticket is tricky, and sometimes is is only a few pence more from the last Zone 6 station...

www.railforums.co.uk

The bug is about a London Euston to Tring while selecting holding a Disabled Persons Freedom Pass

Results | RailUK Tickets

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

tickets-beta.railforums.co.uk

It shows a error of

Leg origin/destination could not be located within train record

Error token: 0HNB3BHBS3SNQ:00000C07

Selecting Anytime Travelcard of Zones 1-2,3,4 works but 5 and 6 fails. Off-Peak TC, Older Persons FP, Disabled Child FP errors as does TfL 60+ Oyster

 

[Adam Williams]

I can reproduce the error message likely seen by @TheManOnThe172 (is it the same)

Thanks, have logged this for investigation. And yes, exactly the same error for the search that they attempted this morning according to our logs