I am attempting to plan a trip from Southport to Billericay, travelling out on 12 January and back on 13 January 2022. The obvious fare to aim for seems to be the Off-Peak return for £68.80 (Senior Railcard rate). The booking engines I have tried are telling me no fares at all are available on 12 January. Is there a reason for this?
Traditionally very few trains in the UK were compulsory reservation, I belive that immediately pre-covid the only compulsary reservation services were the sleeper services.
As part of the pandemic response most intercity trains were marked as compulsory reservation, even though on the ground reservations were rarely enforced. I believe they are not actually enforced on the ground anywhere now but the compulsory reservation flag is still set in the timetable data.
Also as a result of the pandemic, timetable planning has been thrown into disarray, this has resulted in timetables being finalized and reservations released far later than they should be especially when there are engineering works.
Since all of this is new as a result of the pandemic (before the pandemic, very few trains were compulsary reservation and timetables were planned well in advance), the user interface is also very poor, there is no distinction in booking tools between a train where reservations are sold out and a train where reservations have not yet been released (I have no idea if there is a distinction in internal railway systems)
So what are your options?
1. Just wait, probably the best option. Apart from the rail timetable issues it's impossible to predict at this stage what the covid situation will look like by mid January.
2. Force an itinerary that doesn't use Avanti. Trainscanbecheaper can do this* assuming your ticket is not operator restricted, you don't actually have to follow said itinery on the day.
3. Possiblly buy from a ticket office, or telephone sales.
I get that it’s difficult with the NR timetabling and I was the first to complain that retailers would sell tickets for trains that on the day wouldn’t exist but this hasn’t been done because of NR timetabling has it? Surely this isn’t the result of stopping people booking when trains might not run. I thought this was all about keeping passenger numbers spread out.
The intention behind doing something and the effects of doing it are not the same.
If a train is marked as compulsory reservation and no reservations have yet been released then no online retailer will sell you a ticket based on an itinerary that uses that train. And I don't think online retailers are allowed to sell tickets without an itinery. As I mentioned above though you can work around this in most cases by finding an itinerary that doesn't use "intercity" trains.
And no operator wants to release reservations before they are sure the timetable is final.
* on the train I looked at it on the outbound it used merseyrail to Liverpool South Parkway, WMT to birmingham and WMT again to London, while on the on the return from London it used WMT to crewe, Northern to alderly edge and the Northern again to Southport
