The Man in Seat 61

Ta, well spotted! I did so much faffing about with that para to get it right, didn't notice I'd left that in.

The Seat 61 (London-) Brussels-Milan sleeper page is now live, at www.seat61.com/trains-and-r...

Oh, and the Brussels-Milan sleeper train will take the original scenic Gotthard route in daylight between Zurich & Milan. Bonus!

BREAKING: @EuropeanSlpr's new sleeper train from Brussels & Cologne to Zurich, Como & Milan will start 9 September. Tickets go on sale from 17 March with couchettes from €49.99, single/double/triple sleepers also available. 🥳 Press release: mcusercontent.com/5ffbd133c9ab...

Kid falls ill that morning. You wake up with food poisoning. Sporting event rained off. Event cancelled by organizer. AirBnB burnt out. Domestic emergency. Child care falls through. Etc. etc. etc.

We could give passengers GREATER flexibility whilst securing BETTER revenue protection.
It just needs GBR/BR2.0 to be (a) put in place quickly and (b) allowed to manage these things sensibly & holistically at arms length from DfT.
Knee-jerk changes are not the solution!

For example, suppose you could buy walk-up tickets without even specifying a date? With discounts for buying multiple? With online refunds any time if unused? You'd just need to activate a ticket before boarding a train, then it'd become non-refundable.

Current .pdf digital ticketing was only designed to do what a paper ticket does, digitally.
Suppose digital ticketing was reinvented to take full advantage of its potential?

So how do we deal with this?
I gather that pressure for this change has come from overly-basic digital ticketing that has left significant scope for fraudulent refunds.
But we don't have to solve it by putting honest passengers at risk. There's a better way...

Same as buying a BA flight to Cairo. I could choose cheapest non-flex (no refunds) or semi-flex or full-flex. Full-flex was megabucks. I chose semi-flex, cost me a bit more but it’s refundable at my OWN discretion (not a pernickety travel insurer’s say-so) so I’m not at risk of losing £100s.

We're not talking about dynamically-priced Advance fares here, but unlimited-availability fixed-price Off-Peak & Anytime which you can buy on the day at that price. No advantage in pre-buying, which now becomes riskier.
Need a seat reservation? There are ways to do this BEFORE buying a ticket!

If you thought nationalisation would make everything warm and cuddly, think again.
Yes, keeping your money under all circumstances helps prevent fraudulent refund claims.
But at the cost of honest passengers being caught out and losing all their money.
Maybe just drive next time?

Would we have approved this NRCofC change back in 2007 when I headed the fares & ticketing team at DfT?
But it's the government's money now, not the train operators. Govt approving a reduction in consumer protection for its own financial benefit.
Govt is marking its own homework.

There's already an admin fee on refunds which means short hops are (in effect) non-refundable. But if train operators can't check a ticket on a 200-mile journey they don't deserve to keep the money.
Simply making all tickets non-refundable is very lazy revenue protection...

This makes fares MORE complex.
You assume Off-Peak or Anytime fares are flexible so can cope with any eventuality.
Counter-intuitively, if you have to cancel on the day, non-refundable Advance tickets can be moved to a future date, O-P & A tickets can't.
What a mess!

Need to reserve? For inter-city trips, there are ways to make a reservation BEFORE you buy a ticket, find them and use them.
Then buy the ticket ON THE DAY at the station, from the ticket office or on your phone.
Don't hand over money in advance, it's not worth the risk.

Advice to passengers is simple:
NEVER buy Super-Off-Peak, Off-Peak or Anytime tickets in advance.
ALWAYS buy on the day, 5 minutes before you board the train.
If you buy in advance, any on-the-day change of plan could lose you £100s on a long journey.
Even with a flexible ticket.

Fare dodgers targeted as train ticket refund rules are tightened In a bid to clamp down on ticket fraud that costs the railways millions each year, the government has quietly changed the rules on claiming refunds for unused train tickets.

DON'T BUY TRAIN TICKETS IN ADVANCE!
On 1 April, the government is quietly changing the rules.
Off-Peak & Anytime tickets become non-refundable after 23:59 the day BEFORE you travel.
If you wake up & find your event cancelled, NO REFUNDS, even on £100+ tickets.
www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/far...

Standard Belgian domestic tickets are good for any train that day.

Westbahn Management GmbH Wien, privater Betreiber von Fernverkehrszügen auf der Westbahn und auf der Südbahn Virtual Tour durch Westbahn Stadler Smile High Speed Train. Westbahn Management GmbH Wien,der erste österreichische private Betreiber von Fernverkehrszügen

From tomorrow, new Westbahn trains will link Vienna, Graz, Klagenfurt & Villach in competition with ÖBB. See a virtual tour of these new trains at www.kaemena360.com/360/Westbahn...

No, that's literally the policy I highlighted. 55cm. And no way to bring bigger bags, even by paying.

If only someone built a website that allowed you to pick a fare and click ‘buy’ it, WITHOUT needing to find a timetable first!

Look up fares for any train journey in Britain Full details of all British rail Single, Return & Season tickets and Travelcards. Built-in Season Ticket Calculator.

And yet, strangely, the fares themselves still exist. But no Irish train times are now loaded in the National Rail system = no journey found = websites can’t sell as selling is always based on finding a journey first. See www.brfares.com/!fares?orig=... or www.brfares.com/!fares?orig=...

Me too!

No it shouldn’t!

Hang on... STOP THAT WOMAN! That wheelie case in Snalltaget's Oslo-Malmo press release photo is definitely over 55cm... 😅

If I could get it in writing from Snalltaget that they don't really enforce this limit in practice and people with 67cm or 79cm bags will not be turned away, that'd be acceptable. Daft, maybe, but acceptable. But I don't want to put travellers with normal luggage at risk.

I'd rather concentrate on showing the daily all-year service on which luggage isn't a problem.

I don't actually think they check sizes or worry about a 67 or 79 cm bag, but I've had emails from worried travellers about this, and I'm not going to put travellers at risk.

One 67cm roll-along is easy to handle. TWO 55cm bags would be a nightmare. It's Snalltaget that needs to meet passenger needs, not expect passengers to meet their managers' needs.