Best website to buy train tickets these days?

[Nate75]

Sure you get train delays even with attempts at forward planning; Thursday night for example part of my journey had an unadvertised rail replacement bus service (surely the most depressing four word sequence in the English language) for part of the journey, but my point is it's not like train delays are a new phenomenon and it's easier to be forewarned these days, where I live there are multiple different routes I can take to London so there have been times in the past where I've asked my wife to drop me at a different station to avoid an issue on a given line.

Yeh fair point

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

I'm surprised at the number of responses for thetrainline.com here. I stayed away from them because of their booking fees.

I use avantiwestcoast.co.uk even if I'm not travelling by Avanti. No booking fees and it works with all operators as the QR codes they give you are universal.

 

[Haggisman]

How often does that realistically happen? I am about 20 mins away from my GWR station, and you can usually see if there is going to be a problem before you leave the house.

True, probably only about 50% of delays/cancellations are not notified in advance. That's still 1/10, or an average of 2x/month

Again, much better now, because you can check online if trains are delayed/cancelled before setting off from home.

"Good old days" = go to the station, look up at the board, see the trains are ****ed and go back home.
Nowadays = look up the trains to make sure they are running before leaving the house.

It's great that they now have the courtesy to let you know in advance that they aren't going to bother turning up, but knowing the train isn't running doesn't make it any easier to get to work.

Where I live there are multiple different routes I can take to London so there have been times in the past where I've asked my wife to drop me at a different station to avoid an issue on a given line.

That doesn't help on the 2-3x/week strike days we're having at the moment, and also doesn't really help when you can't drive/don't have someone who can drop you at a further station

 

[HangTime]

It doesn't always help but it does in some cases, it's a pareto improvement because worst case it's still no worse than the days of "simply rocking up to the station and buying a ticket over the counter".

If the trains aren't running then being able to buy a ticket over the counter doesn't help either, I would argue it's worse because it requires you to be physically present at the station, which is a journey that can be avoided if you know the trains aren't running.

 

[DB_SamX]

I was gonna say Trainline, despite their £1 booking fee. But yesterday I bought a return at the train station for £22, when on their app, the cheapest ticket was £25 for the same journey.

It's still handy for train journeys I do in France though, as I can pre-buy without going to foreign railway websites.