Trainline offers tickets but not available from TOC

[Riddles]

My wife has been trying to book two return tickets from Penrith North Lakes to Edinburgh Waverley leaving on Sunday 2nd October and returning on Friday 7th October. She has tried to book on the Transpennine Express website but no trains are shown on the Sunday. If she tries to book through The Trainline it appears that tickets ARE available. Tickets are available on Monday 3rd October on Transpennine's system though.

We suspected that trains might have been cancelled for weekend engineering work. She phoned the helpline from a number on Transpennine's website and the "adviser" at first said that details are not available until 12 weeks before the date of travel. When he was reminded that it was already in that period, he said "leave it 'til early August". He did not inspire confidence that he knew what he was talking about.

Are we safe booking through The Trainline? Does anybody know what is going on?

 

[Huntergreed]

My wife has been trying to book two return tickets from Penrith North Lakes to Edinburgh Waverley leaving on Sunday 2nd October and returning on Friday 7th October. She has tried to book on the Transpennine Express website but no trains are shown on the Sunday. If she tries to book through The Trainline it appears that tickets ARE available. Tickets are available on Monday 3rd October on Transpennine's system though.

We suspected that trains might have been cancelled for weekend engineering work. She phoned the helpline from a number on Transpennine's website and the "adviser" at first said that details are not available until 12 weeks before the date of travel. When he was reminded that it was already in that period, he said "leave it 'til early August". He did not inspire confidence that he knew what he was talking about.

Are we safe booking through The Trainline? Does anybody know what is going on?

Welcome to RailUK forums

No engineering works planned for the weekend in question, however the timetable hasn’t been confirmed yet so advance tickets aren’t available, hence why the TPE website prevents booking.

I would strongly encourage you to use trainsplit in future for bookings, it will also show “split ticket” options which are entirely legal and often considerably cheaper than through tickets bought through trainline and train company websites:

Split Train Tickets with TrainSplit | Mobile App | Save up to 90%

TrainSplit compares routes & fares to get the best value train tickets for your next journey through split ticketing with no booking fee & saving up to 90%

trainsplit.com

My advice would be to keep an eye on trainsplit for tickets becoming available and book when they are

 

[James H]

Keep in mind that Trainline will charge you fees whereas you can book via any TOC website fee-free

 

[Watershed]

Weekend timetables are generally "confirmed", i.e. alterations for planned engineering published, 8 weeks in advance at the moment. There aren't any engineering works scheduled to affect the journey on either date (aside from Bank Holidays, weekend closures on this part of the WCML generally fall earlier in the year - around April to June).

However I would caution that there has been an alarmingly high rate of cancellations of Avanti and especially TPE services over recent months. This has been worst on weekends, with TPE instituting an reduced Sunday timetable which essentially involves the withdrawal of all services between Preston and Carlisle. The issues behind these cancellations and reductions appear unlikely to be resolved by October, though things could improve.

So by all means do go ahead and book a cheap Advance, to lock in a good price - but be prepared for the likelihood of your train being cancelled and having to catch an earlier or later one than you planned.

 

[yorkie]

Keep in mind that Trainline will charge you fees whereas you can book via any TOC website fee-free

True but the website linked to above by @Huntergreed won't charge a booking fee and also won't charge more than a TOC website, but may well charge less.

The problem with a TOC website for a journey like Penrith to Edinburgh is that it can be charged as a premium compared to the individual segments; it's therefore a good idea to use a website that calculates all this for you, and you may find the price is lower than what the TOCs will charge.

There seems to be a big problem with availability of Advance fares for this journey on Sundays, but looking at the flexible price, it is cheaper to buy Penrith-Carlisle + Carlisle - Lockerbie + Lockerbie - Edinburgh; there are websites that can calculate this automatically and pass on the majority of the saving to the end user.

Of course TPE would prefer the customer pays the higher fare and buy from them direct.

 

[wilbers]

True but the website linked to above by @Huntergreed won't charge a booking fee and also won't charge more than a TOC website, but may well charge less.

There seems to be a big problem with availability of Advance fares for this journey on Sundays, but looking at the flexible price, it is cheaper to buy Penrith-Carlisle + Carlisle - Lockerbie + Lockerbie - Edinburgh; there are websites that can calculate this automatically and pass on the majority of the saving to the end user.

That only seems to work for day returns (£38.75) rather than open returns?

Its certainly the case from here that its much easier to have a trip to Glasgow than Edinburgh as there are a range of tickets that make sense to buy, not just advances.

 

[kieron]

Are we safe booking through The Trainline? Does anybody know what is going on?

7th October is 12 weeks from tomorrow. If the advisor couldn't see a timetable later than that, he couldn't tell you what was happening then.

I would hold off on buying for now, at least for the outbound journey.

As of today, advance tickets are available using TPE trains on the Friday, but not the Sunday, and no tickets at all are available using Avanti ones.

TPE says you can book advance tickets on weekdays until 9/12, but no advance tickets are available on Sundays because of the industrial action. For Avanti, weekday trains are available until 9/9, and weekend ones until 14/8. Avanti and Trainline have alerts to show when Advance ticket become available (you fill in a form and they send an e-mail when advance tickets are released), but I haven't used either.

The cheapest Advance tickets for an operator are usually available when they start selling them for that date, so it may be best to wait until Avanti starts before buying any tickets for the Sunday. The same applies for the Friday, but you need to balance the prospect of cheap Avanti Advance tickets against the likelihood that TPE Advance tickets will become more expensive between now and then.

If you don't want tickets which are restricted to a particular train, then you can buy whenever it makes sense to you, although you won't be able to buy any "Avanti only" tickets online until they start selling advance tickets for those dates.

In that case, you might consider buying from a retailer such as Southern, which offers a fee free refund for flexible tickets if you meet a few conditions, just in case something stops you from travelling.