Buying train point-to-point tickets from London to Bath

National Rail will have redirected you to The Great Western trains website. If that is malfunctioning for some reason try the LNER website, as that consistently seems to perform best for overseas visitors. It doesn't matter which train company you buy the tickets from.

buying directly is the best solution but if you're still having trouble then the reseller Trainline works well although they add a small surcharge https://www.thetrainline.com/en-us

Many thanks, I will try both suggestions

National Rail sent you to GWR, which has been glitchy recently. It locked up on me a few times at the seat selection point. I used Avanti instead and it was fine.

All rail companies can sell each other’s tickets, but unless you know the names of them it can be difficult to know where to go.

reseller Trainline works well

It doesn’t if things go wrong and you pay extra for no reason. As said try the other TOCs such as LNER, Avanti, Southern…

isn31c Thanks for this tip , it's too soon to buy the six tickets I will need on my upcoming trip , but I checked LNER and that absolutely worked best for them all . My first trip is Euston to Liverpool Lime St , and Avanti was a bit fiddly . Also I'll only need to create one account with LNER to buy them all when available

You can buy tickets from any operator or use the official site Trainline - no need to use the National Rail links. These NR links regularly stop working for a range of companies

How is Trainline an "official" site? The individual train operating companies are the official sites - and no surcharge, and easy refunds if something delays the train.

The only way that Trainline is an "official" site is that many of the train companies process their bookings through Trainline, but without the service fee that Trainline charge if you book direct with them, and yes far easier to handle if booked direct with a train company (any) than with Trainline.

Any website, for any company (not just a train company), can glitch. If it is go back a few hours later, or next day.

We just returned from England last night and I wanted to share our experience, we did travel from London to Bath as well during our trip. We purchased almost all of our train tickets in advance through LNER and found using their app to show tickets worked well. We also bought a friends and family rail card, used the app (which you do have to show when you show your tickets) and it saved us a bit of money traveling as 3 adults - my daughter is 17 so counted as adult - and 1 child.

Having said that, we ended up traveling during the strikes and I ended up refunding and rebooking tickets while I was standing in train stations. We bought in advance because I am a high anxiety traveler, haha! I really LOVE a plan! But honestly, my husband and I both agreed in the future, unless it was a very specialized route, we wouldn't buy advance tickets again. We traveled London Paddington to Bath Spa and there were plenty of trains to choose from and so easy to just buy right there at the kiosks. We still bought through LNER because they were so wonderful about refunding our tickets due to the strikes, we found reserving seats through LNER much easier, and their app was very good and stable in every location we were in. If I were doing it again, in my opinion, I would just buy when I got there. But if buying in advance, I found LNER was the best way for us to go!

@Flower-We are also going from Paddington to Bath this fall. My understanding was the benefit to buying in advance is a cheaper price. Did you find this to be true?

Thanks for the recommendations to go to LNER. It worked pretty well. We were able to buy our advance tickets from London to Bath in less than 5 minutes.

I'm not Flower, but the next train to depart this evening walk up fare is £39.90 with no railcard. With no railcard 12 weeks from now (the normal booking horizon) for off-peak travel Advance tickets are £23.00.

A walk up Anytime fare for peak travel (or because folks don't know the other choices) is £117.80, an Advance at peak hours is £74.50. These fares are all available to see on https://www.gwr.com/tickets

These are all Standard Class. First Class is significantly more.

Advantage of walk up tickets - maximum flexibility. Disadvantage - £££££

Advantage of Advance tickets - much less ££. Disadvantage - no flexibility, no refunds normally, difficult and expensive to change in the station only.

It pays to learn the system.

@diveloonie - Yes, the advance tickets were cheaper, we'd bought pretty much all our tickets before we left the states - although I used my Friends/Family Rail Card and that helped close the gap by a good amount. Our issue was they were on strike/industrial action 3 of the days we had advance tickets for, so I had to apply for refunds and pay the rate that day as it was anyhow (fortunately, even though advance tickets are not typically refundable they did refund due to the strike). Actually, we'd bought a second refundable ticket using a train service not affected by the strike in advance as well because we were aware the strike was coming and that train ended up cancelled also, so we still had to refund that ticket and buy at the station :-)

As the poster above mentioned, we actually preferred the flexibility that came with purchasing when we were there. Also, we did not travel at any peak times because we were on vacation - so tickets were already less at the times we traveled. It might make a big difference depending on the number of people traveling as well if it is worth it to you in the trade off for the cost difference. We were very happy, however, with the service and purchased all of our tickets through the LNER website/APP and that worked well too.

Still confused. If I want to buy advance tickets, do I purchase on LNER or GWR?

Still confused. If I want to buy advance tickets, do I purchase on LNER or GWR?

Either. It doesn’t matter. Just make sure that they say Advance with a capital A if you want the cheapest. All rail companies sell each other’s tickets.