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Train travel in Yorkshire: Off-Peak Tickets vs. Anytime Day Tickets

My wife and I are going on a hiking vacation in Yorkshire this May. We will not have a car and are planning to use trains and busses as needed. On Sunday the 12th, we’ll be taking the train from Middlesbrough to Lincoln. We have a two for one rail card and are booking through the LNER website.

I’ve put in the necessary information to purchase the tickets and see that we’ll have two connections. There is an 8 minute time difference between the two trains at the first connection and a 12 minute difference at the second connection. It seems the Anytime Day ticket is the safest bet given the short turnaround time. I checked and there are later trains that we could catch if we missed the connections. However the LNER site also suggests buying Off-Peak tickets instead even though they appear to be limited to the specific trains that you book.

I have a couple of questions:
1. Is the Anytime ticket the best choice?
2. How are assigned seats managed? In booking the Anytime tickets, LNER site does not provide seat numbers for the first and third trains but gives us assigned seats on the second train.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I’d like to go ahead and buy the tickets in the next couple of days.

Thanks!
Jim

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8134 posts

Off Peak tickets are also unrestricted.
But if you book an advance ticket for around £31 to £40 each, if you miss a connection due to late running you are automatically entitled to take the next train, no questions asked. All the guards can access real time train information to verify that you missed your booked connection.

The local trains to Lincoln on the 3rd leg have no assigned seating, the trains on the 1st leg to Darlington haven't either. Just sit anywhere. If you miss the connection at Darlington book a new seat on the next train on this LNER web page- no charge- book up to 5 minutes before departure- https://www.lner.co.uk/travel-information/make-a-reservation/

The reservations on the train automatically update- or just find an unreserved seat when you board