In the U.K. it seems that most rail staff that I know have a general dislike towards Trainline. Is it the same in continental Europe, or do the staff not mind it as much?
20 comments
What’s Trainline?
Why do they dislike it? Forgive my ignorance, but isn’t it just a ticket sales site?
I’m admittedly not rail staff but I’ve never heard of Trainline in my life
Never heard of this.
Whats the point of this? Looks less functional than booking on the official website or app of the railservice…
The /r/uktrains subreddit often has questions about fare disputes and half of them can be explained by “thetrainline fucked it”
Not rail staff, but you should probably have specified what “Trainline” is because I’ve never heard of it.
Google tells me it’s like a skyscanner but for trains? But trying to search for something just turns up Flixbus and nothing else, no trains?
Either way, never heard of it, whenever I’ve needed to book European train ticket’s I’ve done it through DSB/SJ/VR/DB/Renfe etc. I generally don’t like to do third party for transportation, that includes trains, buses and planes.
Trainline is only a British thing just go to a company like northern or ScotRail to get the tickets to avoid the fee.
(From a French point of view) So I use Trainline at work to book my manager’s train. I prefer it from the SNCF website which is a total nightmare to use. Trainline is easy to navigate, straightforward, fast. I don’t know how me booking on trainline impact the rail staff as trainline provide me with a normal train ticket
I’m not a rail staff, but I’d rather check routes by the Man in Seat 61 (https://www.seat61.com/) and then look it up in various national rail websites.
Any country that isn’t maliciously stupid has a state-imposed fare distribution to begin with. You don’t pay the operator, you pay the transit agency and they refund the operator. This is because everyone who isn’t maliciously stupid knows by default that inconvenient public transportation defeats its own point.
While there are different companies (including UK National Rail) providing services on various train connections as contractors, all “public” train connections can be booked with the same Deutsche Bahn App, so there wouldn’t really be a point for an external app like Trainline.
I’ve certainly never heard of it before today and I doubt anyone really uses it here.
Trainline is funny because under the bonnet of the 15-odd franchised operators they all use the same ticketing and revenue system. I could go onto the East Midlands Railway website and book a journey on Great Western, a counter-intuitive comparison to in France where different branches of SNCF have their own ticket machines and tickets aren’t interchangable between them (e.g. beween SNCF Intercity and a regional service on the same route).
Their entire USP and the reason people still use them is because they’ve developed a better UI and can do split ticketing in places where this is a factor.
I can’t speak for rail staff but the prices you get are the same as what you get booking through the carrier. The whole site seems to be a marketing funnel for hotel bookings (where the money actually is) that uses rail trips as a hook.
This is like /r/USdefaultism but for UK – based on the replies nobody here in Europe has any inkling what Trainline is.
Why would you assume otherwise in the first place?
WTF you don’t use trainline? Is cheaper and the UI is much better than having 300 apps for each country?
Funny, just found out about and used this page for the first time in my life 1 min ago. Seemed to work just fine, whats the problem with it?
(Not rail staff) tl;dr, I use it because I find it more pleasant to use that than the official alternative.
As a French person, I use Trainline whenever I need to book tickets from my phone, simply because the SNCF app is clunky, the user experience awful, and it made me angry every time I used it. Call me crazy, but the main appeal of Trainline for me is being able to fill in my departure station, arrival, date, and number of passengers from the welcome screen, select a train on the next screen, pay, and go on with my day. Meanwhile, the SNCF app forces uses separate screens for departure and arrival stations (in reverse order 😒). It does not let you book regional trains (TER) without clicking on a button that takes you to yet another screen, where you have to fill the stations and dates a second time. Add the obnoxious full screen ads when you open the app, and the travel insurance ad in the checkout process, and that’s a lest 6 different screens every time tou need to book a train. And that’s when everything works on the first attempt … throw in the bugs that regularly occur during the booking process, and you’ve got a recipe for a headache.
My bf still uses the SNCF app, and while he admits it’s far from perfect, he thinks it is serviceable and that I’m overreacting. Maybe he’s right: I admit that I’m not very patient when using computers or apps, despite being a software engineer, or maybe precisely because of it. Some people are more patient and there’s nothing wrong with that.
I don’t think we have this in the Netherlands. We also don’t really need it, as we hardly book train tickets in advance I think and for international travel we have other websites.
I’m European and live in the UK and I’ve used Trainline when travelling in Italy. Still the same QR code so inspector won’t care. Might pay extra but you sometimes pay for the convenience of not navigating unfamiliar apps with potential foreign languages thrown in.
It’s always rail staff moaning about it, individual train company apps are often bloody awful (I’m looking at you GWR) and Trainline just works and is a much simpler interface IME.
I’ve switched to LNER recently to get NatWest rewards even though I’m nowhere near London or the North East and exclusively get GWR trains, that’s how fucked up things are.
20 comments
What’s Trainline?
Why do they dislike it? Forgive my ignorance, but isn’t it just a ticket sales site?
I’m admittedly not rail staff but I’ve never heard of Trainline in my life
Never heard of this.
Whats the point of this? Looks less functional than booking on the official website or app of the railservice…
The /r/uktrains subreddit often has questions about fare disputes and half of them can be explained by “thetrainline fucked it”
Not rail staff, but you should probably have specified what “Trainline” is because I’ve never heard of it.
Google tells me it’s like a skyscanner but for trains? But trying to search for something just turns up Flixbus and nothing else, no trains?
Either way, never heard of it, whenever I’ve needed to book European train ticket’s I’ve done it through DSB/SJ/VR/DB/Renfe etc. I generally don’t like to do third party for transportation, that includes trains, buses and planes.
Trainline is only a British thing just go to a company like northern or ScotRail to get the tickets to avoid the fee.
(From a French point of view) So I use Trainline at work to book my manager’s train. I prefer it from the SNCF website which is a total nightmare to use. Trainline is easy to navigate, straightforward, fast. I don’t know how me booking on trainline impact the rail staff as trainline provide me with a normal train ticket
I’m not a rail staff, but I’d rather check routes by the Man in Seat 61 (https://www.seat61.com/) and then look it up in various national rail websites.
Any country that isn’t maliciously stupid has a state-imposed fare distribution to begin with. You don’t pay the operator, you pay the transit agency and they refund the operator. This is because everyone who isn’t maliciously stupid knows by default that inconvenient public transportation defeats its own point.
While there are different companies (including UK National Rail) providing services on various train connections as contractors, all “public” train connections can be booked with the same Deutsche Bahn App, so there wouldn’t really be a point for an external app like Trainline.
I’ve certainly never heard of it before today and I doubt anyone really uses it here.
Trainline is funny because under the bonnet of the 15-odd franchised operators they all use the same ticketing and revenue system. I could go onto the East Midlands Railway website and book a journey on Great Western, a counter-intuitive comparison to in France where different branches of SNCF have their own ticket machines and tickets aren’t interchangable between them (e.g. beween SNCF Intercity and a regional service on the same route).
Their entire USP and the reason people still use them is because they’ve developed a better UI and can do split ticketing in places where this is a factor.
I can’t speak for rail staff but the prices you get are the same as what you get booking through the carrier. The whole site seems to be a marketing funnel for hotel bookings (where the money actually is) that uses rail trips as a hook.
This is like /r/USdefaultism but for UK – based on the replies nobody here in Europe has any inkling what Trainline is.
Why would you assume otherwise in the first place?
WTF you don’t use trainline? Is cheaper and the UI is much better than having 300 apps for each country?
Funny, just found out about and used this page for the first time in my life 1 min ago. Seemed to work just fine, whats the problem with it?
(Not rail staff) tl;dr, I use it because I find it more pleasant to use that than the official alternative.
As a French person, I use Trainline whenever I need to book tickets from my phone, simply because the SNCF app is clunky, the user experience awful, and it made me angry every time I used it. Call me crazy, but the main appeal of Trainline for me is being able to fill in my departure station, arrival, date, and number of passengers from the welcome screen, select a train on the next screen, pay, and go on with my day. Meanwhile, the SNCF app forces uses separate screens for departure and arrival stations (in reverse order 😒). It does not let you book regional trains (TER) without clicking on a button that takes you to yet another screen, where you have to fill the stations and dates a second time. Add the obnoxious full screen ads when you open the app, and the travel insurance ad in the checkout process, and that’s a lest 6 different screens every time tou need to book a train. And that’s when everything works on the first attempt … throw in the bugs that regularly occur during the booking process, and you’ve got a recipe for a headache.
My bf still uses the SNCF app, and while he admits it’s far from perfect, he thinks it is serviceable and that I’m overreacting. Maybe he’s right: I admit that I’m not very patient when using computers or apps, despite being a software engineer, or maybe precisely because of it. Some people are more patient and there’s nothing wrong with that.
I don’t think we have this in the Netherlands. We also don’t really need it, as we hardly book train tickets in advance I think and for international travel we have other websites.
I’m European and live in the UK and I’ve used Trainline when travelling in Italy. Still the same QR code so inspector won’t care. Might pay extra but you sometimes pay for the convenience of not navigating unfamiliar apps with potential foreign languages thrown in.
It’s always rail staff moaning about it, individual train company apps are often bloody awful (I’m looking at you GWR) and Trainline just works and is a much simpler interface IME.
I’ve switched to LNER recently to get NatWest rewards even though I’m nowhere near London or the North East and exclusively get GWR trains, that’s how fucked up things are.