The mysteries of advance purchase booking horizons

[shinkansen1966]

Looking at the booking some advance purchase tickets in July. Though I’d do this in conjunction with the Trainline.com’s advance booking window. I never use the Trainline preferring to use EastCoast for their rewards points and EC only ticket discounts.

As of this afternoon – Thursday 25 April 2013, advance bookings appear to be:

• First Great Western – Wed 10 July – Trainline.com says 21 July – wrong
• Virgin West Coast – Wed 17 July - Trainline.com says 12 July – wrong
• East Coast – Sun 14 July - Trainline.com says 14 July – correct

How come train operators have different booking horizons, despite all using one provider of their infrastructure: Network Rail ?

And TrainLine’s web site is neither use nor ornament. It’s the most expensive way to buy tickets and their bookings horizons web site cannot be trusted.

I’ll stick with my original method: every day visit the relevant train operator’s web site and check how far ahead you can book.

 

[bb21]

The booking horizon for each TOC is different depending on various factors, one of which being engineering work arrangements with Network Rail. These arrangements are finalised at different times with Network Rail so while one TOC may not be affected by them for a particular day, therefore being free to release quotas for those days, another TOC might still be finalising timetables for a different area, hence no Advance quotas being released for that day until the timetables have been confirmed.

You only need to use one booking engine. For any particular TOC, all booking engines should be selling the same tickets.

 

[hairyhandedfool]

National Rail Enquiries has a webpage with the booking horizons listed for all TOCs, my advice would be NEVER to use thetrainline.

Although Network Rail may give engineering details out to TOCs 12 weeks before the day, each TOC has to assess the impact on their services, plan any alterations (including staff working patterns) and submit the new timetable to Network Rail. Only when the timetable is confirmed should the Advance tickets go on sale. Different TOCs are affected differently by a given piece of engineering work and each will have differing amounts of work to do to get the timetable right.

 

[Sleepy]

I have certainly found FGW Advance tickets released on different dates depending which ticket retailer you look at !!

 

[shinkansen1966]

I have certainly found FGW Advance tickets released on different dates depending which ticket retailer you look at !!

That's worth bearing in mind for my own summer travel plans...