We can't issue those through tickets currently. Made a note to have a look next week to see if that flow's restricted to certain retailers (which is my initial guess) or whether we might be able to look at retailing it.
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woolleywoods
Member
Can I book an all line 7 day rover ticket through rail forums
Not at present unfortunately - like most other online retailers, we're unable to sell rovers/rangers of any description.
woolleywoods
Member
Mike395 thank you so much for your help would rather have done it through the forum if I could such a helpful platform in every sense so would have liked to put something back in however limited that would be
Thanks again Jon
Thanks again Jon
Feel free to post the info here and I'm sure someone will take a look. It's more that support requests for actual bookings should be via official channels rather than spotting things like missing fares that should be offered 
FrodshamJnct
Established Member
Morning all, I booked tickets through the forum a couple of weeks ago, from Frodsham to Newport on 13th September, leaving Frodsham at 0657 to connect with the 0716 departure from Chester to Cardiff Central. I've had an email overnight telling me the 0716 service is now cancelled. Looking at the timetable, I can see it's still there but only running as far as Shrewsbury. Any ideas what's happened? Planned engineering works? TIA.
Mcr Warrior
Veteran Member
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Looks like there's engineering work (and bus replacements) that week in the Craven Arms area, between Shrewsbury and Hereford. See link below.
So, reckon you can still get to Cardiff, but it'll take quite a bit longer.
FrodshamJnct
Established Member
Thanks for the info, much appreciated.
Mcr Warrior
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Might add a couple of hours to the through journey.
Trainbike46
Established Member
I was just trying to book RailSail tickets Belfast-London for August 3rd on the forums ticket website, and it tells me:
however, the greater anglia website with the same input is willing to sell me a ticket, so something appears to be wrong
You do often need to play around with the time of your search. Its something I experienced myself when booking mine for the coming days.
Despite my itinerary starting at 9pm or so, it would only show it if I search for closer to 6 or 7pm.
If you let us know your departure station, I could give it a go and send a link here.
Trainbike46
Established Member
Thank you for replying! your suggestion worked.
I tried changing the departure time from 6 am, and if I put at 11 am it does give the 11:30 departure only, if I put it at 15:00 I get the 15:30 departure only. There is only 2 departures per day currently. Whereas the Greater Anglia website gives both departures if you put in 6 am as departure time. I'm not sure how easy or hard it would be to implement, but giving the first few departures after the selected time would be good, even if they're not until much later in the day
Details:
Departure station: Belfast Port (BFA)
Destination: London Euston (EUS)
date: August 3rd
with 16-25 railcard
CaptainHaddock
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Is there a way of limiting the number of split tickets on a journey? I'm trying to book my elderly parents on a journey from Sheffield to Swansea and Trainsplit is offering a journey with four splits each way (Derby, Birmingham, Cheltenham, Newport) even though the journey only involves a change at Bristol Parkway. They don't have smartphones so e-tickets aren't an option and I don't think they want to fiddle with 36 paper tickets.
Haywain
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eTickets can be printed out, it's not necessary to have a smartphone.
If you use the forum website, all the e-tickets will be in a single PDF document which could be printed and shown as appropriate.
CaptainHaddock
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Thanks but that isn't the question I asked. I want to know if there is a way of limiting the number of splits on a journey to say 1 or 2 at most.
Adam Williams
Established Member
No, the journey planner doesn't support this and it's not functionality I'd ask for engineering time to be spent on unfortunately.
CaptainHaddock
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That's disappointing. It's not just the e-ticket thing, it's that if you have five split tickets you end up with five different seat reservations so will have the inconvenience of having to move to different seats several times over the course of your journey, not really what you want if you're elderly and have luggage.
Haywain
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That's not true. The site tries to allocate you the same seat throughout your journey.
Adam Williams
Established Member
For elderly passengers, I'd encourage you to contact customer services after booking and ask if there's anything they can do with the seat reservations to avoid that problem. Haywain is correct to say that the site does its best to book the same seat throughout but sometimes the way inventory is managed in S3 Passenger makes that impossible whilst trying to book seats tied to the ticket types sold at purchase time.
I suspect it's likely they'd be able to help. Passenger Assist would also be an appropriate venue to use to work around that problem.
I'm sympathetic but it's a niche case to find someone that wants "a bit of splitting but not too much" and the system is generally designed for either maximising savings or offering you a through ticket if you'd rather not deal with splits. The priority has to be changes which benefit most customers.
BRX
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I don't think it's all that niche.
In the past I've looked at journeys on trainsplit where it's offered me journeys with multiple splits that do work - but would involve hopping between different reserved seats and only save me a pound or two compared to something less complex, that I end up booking manually myself because I'd rather not have the faff.
On those occasions, I've thought it would be good to have an option to exclude itineraries where the passenger has to move between different seats on the same train. It's not just elderly or less mobile passengers who might find this useful - could also be relevant when 2 or more people are traveling together, or when you have heavy or awkward luggage.
In the past I've looked at journeys on trainsplit where it's offered me journeys with multiple splits that do work - but would involve hopping between different reserved seats and only save me a pound or two compared to something less complex, that I end up booking manually myself because I'd rather not have the faff.
On those occasions, I've thought it would be good to have an option to exclude itineraries where the passenger has to move between different seats on the same train. It's not just elderly or less mobile passengers who might find this useful - could also be relevant when 2 or more people are traveling together, or when you have heavy or awkward luggage.
Adam Williams
Established Member
This is a separate issue which is being actively pursued with RDG (I actually had a call featuring this on the agenda a few hours ago). There is zero reason why split-ticketing retailers should be treated as second class citizens and be unable to book through-seats in the way that through-ticket retailers can, so I don't think this is a niche problem at all - but one that needs solving by Sqills (the supplier) rather than with a feature which will make customers pay more. The latter is solving the problem in the wrong place.
We can't determine this in advance. We only find out if we get different seats on the same train at the point of actually making reservations with the industry's reservation system.
BRX
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If there was an (opt-in) option to only use splits where they coincided with a change of train would that provide a kind of middle way, hopefully still being able to offer something cheaper than a through ticket but without the risk of requiring seat-hopping?
Snow1964
Established Member
You can print out the pdf, change print settings to 4 pages per sheet, and double sided. The pdf sorts them into correct order for journey, for each passenger. So get a multi-stage ticket not 36 pages. (4 splits should be 5 tickets, each person, each way =20)
Can try putting more pages on each sheet but risk not being readable.
CaptainHaddock
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I've just tried to make a test booking through Trainsplit and it booked Coach D, Seats 18 & 19 from Sheffield to Birmingham, at which point Trainsplit expects my elderly parents to get up and fight their way through the disembarking passengers to move to Coach C, seats 51 and 52 for the rest of the journey to Bristol Parkway.
On the return leg between Swansea and Bristol Parkway they have to change seats at Newport and Trainsplit won't even show what seats they have reserved from Bristol Parlway to Sheffield.
Sorry but a booking site that "tries to allocate you the same seat throughout your journey" isn't good enough; for a long distance journey I want one that absolutely 100% guarantees the same seat throughout the journey. If Trainsplit can't do that then regrettably I'll have to book elsewhere, even if that means paying a little over the odds.
You can turn off split tickets when making the search if you're happy paying the extra for a through ticket where you'll always get through reservations (provided there is such a seat, not something Trainsplit controls, and will be the same across all retailers)
This likely means there was no seat available and they were issued a counted place for that segment, something that would affect all retailers
Adam Williams
Established Member
Regrettably, as this is down to the reservation system not being fit for purpose for split ticketing, it will afflict you wherever you book so it simply doesn't matter. It affects Trainline with their SplitSave too, they were the ones pushing for a resolution earlier because it frustrates their customers just as much as our customers.
It's trivial to obtain a "through" seat reservation using the GWR website's My Account functionality (NB this works for all TOCs, not just GWR).
For those who don't like doing things online (in which case, why use an online retailer?), through reservations can also be obtained through any ticket office or the relevant TOC's customer services.
Whilst clearly any of those methods involve slightly more effort than just buying a ticket, and it shouldn't be this way - it's really not a big problem. Given the huge savings often available by splitting, it seems rather a false economy to stick with through tickets.
We're pleased to announce that RailUK Tickets now has PlusBus support! - You can now purchase PlusBus tickets as an add-on when buying your rail tickets where your journey starts or finishes in a PlusBus zone. Particularly with a railcard, this can be good value (even with the current single fare cap) if doing multiple journeys in an area. We'll also be able to support e-tickets for PlusBus as this is rolled out (it's only in a couple of trial areas at present)
Additionally (this has been in place a while, but it's a good opportunity to mention it) - we're occasionally asked how users can make a small donation towards running costs (particularly those who want to ad-block guilt free!), we've now put a mechanism in place for this through our ticketing site. You'll have the option to add a small donation should you wish to do so as part of the booking flow - 100% of this after card fees comes directly to us. (Just to reassure everyone, the default will always be zero and we're not planning to introduce any booking fees whatsoever - this is entirely to satisfy requests we've had from people who don't want to have the ads enabled!)
Additionally (this has been in place a while, but it's a good opportunity to mention it) - we're occasionally asked how users can make a small donation towards running costs (particularly those who want to ad-block guilt free!), we've now put a mechanism in place for this through our ticketing site. You'll have the option to add a small donation should you wish to do so as part of the booking flow - 100% of this after card fees comes directly to us. (Just to reassure everyone, the default will always be zero and we're not planning to introduce any booking fees whatsoever - this is entirely to satisfy requests we've had from people who don't want to have the ads enabled!)