If you are travelling, travel with confidence
Take a few simple steps to protect others and travel safely:
Please bring a face covering to wear both on-board the train and in all enclosed areas of railway stations (unless you are exempt). It should cover your mouth and nose.
Wash your hands – many national rail stations now have hand sanitiser available
Don’t travel if you have symptoms of Covid-19 – self-isolate and get a test
For the latest travel guidance, check the National Rail website. You can also access information on ticket refunds and frequently asked questions.
Book with confidence: fee-free change of journey scheme
From Monday 21 June 2021, Advance ticket bookings can be exchanged to travel at a different time or date fee-free, until 31 March 2022. This temporary scheme has been put in place due to the pandemic, to enable more flexibility with Advance tickets which have traditionally been fixed-time, less flexible fares.
Receiving an error when booking?
My Train Ticket has decided to not show trains that must be reserved but have no seats available. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many long-distance trains have been set to require seat reservations. We check if these are available before we show the train. Other sites don’t. You are offered them but then receive an error message when you try to actually book them. This can be very frustrating.
As the situation improves, it’s likely that these trains will once again be available to customers who don’t have reservations. When that happens, they’ll appear in our results again.
Why is this happening?
This is happening mainly because the timetable isn’t being confirmed very far in advance. Before COVID, most trains were confirmed 12 weeks before they were scheduled to run. But now, many train companies (or Network Rail) are unable to confirm them that far in advance. This is because (amongst other reasons) they don’t know what the demand will be like, or what staff will be available. So these trains (although they exist in the timetable) aren’t opened for reservations.
If you are not getting the result you wanted, try searching with different times or if possible dates. Also try again closer to your date of travel.
Sometimes we can find results on alternative routes that are available, so you’ll only see journeys that don’t appear to take the best route.
Hopefully all this will go away soon, once the country starts to get back to normal again.
