Great Western Coffee Shop

Not sure if its just me.

I put in the to and from etc and then it says "oops some gone wrong",do a refresh and it then seems to work.

Thoughts any one?

I haven't used Trainline for several years, but just out of interest I logged into my old account a few minutes ago, typed in a journey and it generated exactly the results I expected. Have you tried using a different web browser?

I’d love to understand why anyone uses Trainline.

Agree in general but...

Recently - in the last few months - Trainline has been offering advanced tickets that were unobtainable from the TOC's normal websites.

Hmmm…..are Advance tickets considered to be piblic fares or special offers?

If the former, surely the ticketing agreement or other regulation means that these tickets, when available, should be equally available across all recognised sales outlets?

If a special offer, then my understsnding is that the TOC can choose which outlet(s) to use.

BUT I also understand that special offer fares have to have a limited time availability such that the dates available to purchase have to be mentioned.

So either these are not Advance tockets as we understand them, or someone is breaking ticket selling regulations. I wonder which it is?

My suspicion was the the Trainline had contracted with the TOC to sell a certain amount of Advanced Tickets when the government was putting the squeeze on the TOC to restrict their sales to discourage travel.

If so, that’s against the regulations, snd those tickets ought to becavsilable across all channels

I would suspect that there is / was an agreement in place - perhaps a higher commission to Trainline on all Advance tickets sold provided a certain target through them is exceeded.   Provided that the same tickets can also by bought by the public at the same end user price through "all channels", I would suspect it's within regulations.  I would be more doubtful of it being within regulations if the tickets / offer was "only available on Trainline", though I have seen, I think, TOCs themselves offering special deals "only through us" ...

This indicates otherwise Graham

The offers from TOCs are often tickets that aren’t generally available versions, so ot the recognised Peak, off-peak or Advances

Ah - hadn't noted that - input data flood this morning and too much skim reading!

Can I ask what members use to find out trains times?

I most often use an app called Railboard on my phone or tablet.  Sometimes I’ll use the National Rail Enquiries website, and occasionally RealTimeTrains.

National Rail Enquiries app

Mostly https://tickets.gwr.com/gw/en/journeyplanning/mixingdeck and https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/detailed/ with occasional use of other sites. In the increasingly rare event I actually make a booking GWR is probably the main one though I'm more likely to use other websites for booking (eg. if the TOC has an offer/feature on their own site such as being able to select a specific seat to reserve) than for just looking up train times.

I have this pinned to the home screen on my phone
  https://live-departures.info/rail/departures/nearest/

It tells me the departures from whichever station I am nearest to. It's not an app, it's a web site.

For more detailed info, I normally use the National Rail app or website.

I normally book through GWR but it's thrown a few odd fares at me recently so on those occasions I used Southern or SWR to book.

Talking of Trainline..................

Anger as Trainline withdraws Railcard offer early (https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2021/11/railcard-users-left-frustrated-after-trainline-withdraws-its-bla/)

Other factors aside, they'll have pulled in some of the people who owing to the pandemic didn't renew, found that no extension was offered on the railcards despite being forbidden to use the trains, and will have then seen this offer as an opportunity to get aboard once more, so will be particularly unhappy that it's promptly been withdrawn.

Seemed too good to be true and annoyingly, just before my other half was going to renew her's too.
I did wonder if such a huge (50%) discount would cause consternation amongst those involved in the offer.  Hardly the Hoover free flights debacle of the early 1990s but seemingly a miscalculation from the girls and boys in sales and marketing.

Having said that, I see the National Rail app seems to have been removed from the Google Play store. I don't know if that's a temporary glitch or permanent. I only noticed when I tried to leave a review. I have no plans to delete it from my phone but I may need to look for something else.

The review I was going to make was that

• departure times do not show correctly if you use larger font. Instead of a time of 20.05, it shows
  20.0
  5
• If my journey involves more than one train, I use the planner. It shows me where and when to change. If I refer to it again during the journey it often thinks I'm planning a new journey and I have to key everything in again. I can't see a way of pinning that journey.

There’s definity a ‘pin this journey’ button on the Narional Rail app on apple. I use it a lot

I think the official line is that only 20 people used it for through journey purposes. Don't worry though, I am told that if you use the GWR and SWR apps together the connection is such that you will hardly notice the difference.