Using Trainline to purchase rail tickets ?

Yes— The Trainline is a very reputable website on which to buy train tickets throughout Europe. The various national train companies—which are usually the government-run operator of the train system— have contracted with The Trainline to sell their train tickets. So, it is legit and, in fact both the guru of worldwide train travel, Mark Smith—“The Man in Seat 61,” who. himself, was a BritRail employee for years, recommends The Trainline—-as does Rick Steves.
Take a look at how easy and fast it is to use The Trainline’s website and you’ll likely be a lifetime customer.
The Trainline makes most of its revenue from advertising which is why you usually can buy tickets at close to the cost the national train companies themselves charge.for the tickets.
www.TheTrainline.com is the link.
If you decide to buy tix through The Trainline. be sure to download the App and your purchase information ( name, address, passport #, credit card number, etc.) will be saved in the system so you only enter everything one time. This saves a lot of time in buying multiple train tickets on a website few train companies can compete with.
Cheers!

Ita reputable, but why pay commission to a third party when you can book direct all your tickets via any of the train operating companies? These are all very.simple routes to book.

And make sure you have dates in the correct (UK) order when booking.:)

Regarding the Trainline, many UK rail companies use the Train line as their back office to sell their own tickets.
The user web experience is exactly the same.
So you can buy the same tickets from the rail company direct for no commission (order fulfilled by the Trainline) or pay commission to the Trainline.

And you get told of any later issues by the train company if you book direct. Both the Man in Seat 61 and RS get secondary commission if only by click through payment for their referrals. Nothing wrong in that, per se, just a fact to know. The man in Seat 61 used to honesty declare that, not now.

Also all the above are commuter, buy at station routes.

There will be value in buying the London to Bexhill tickets ahead of time as they could get much cheaper Advance tickets but for the others I see no real point in bothering. There will be little or no financial advantage - they can just walk up and buy on the day.

As Stuart says booking with the train operator avoids any extra fees and it's much easier to sort any issues out of something goes wrong.

Seat61 does still mention receiving affiliate income in the "about". I do recall disclaimers used sometimes to be nearer to the actual links.

The site generates income through affiliate schemes, and this supports the site, helps fund my travel habit (...er, I mean research, of course) and buys me the occasional bottle of my favourite Chateau Musar...

His current lead UK ticket provider is TfW although there is a steer towards Trainline for people who have problems paying at TfW.

just buy at the station for those routes - you don't need to book ahead

I avoid using Trainline- they charge a commission, they've admitted they don't always show/prioritise all the cheapest options, and they actually cost the UK taxpayer money as the railways which have been nationalised also have to pay them a commission. I use the National Rail website which then takes you to the operator's website, tho you can also just use any operator's website and that should give you all the same info (I know people here like to use ScotRail).

All that said, you can still use it, and the commission is only 5%, but above are the reasons why I personally do not.

I really like the LNER app for buying train tickets in Great Britain. It’s very easy to use, and I’ve never had a problem with it taking my credit card. On a longer journey, I will use the Scot Rail site to see if I can save money with split tickets, but I don’t think that will be an issue for you.

For senior travelers who are nervous about tech, I’d advise consolidating into a single app, even if that means paying for ads, or third party nonsense, or whatever.

Asking older folks with limited technology skills to rock up at a train station and negotiate the ticket machine is not realistic, I don’t think. I’ve spent more time than I can account for helping nervous (not even always older) travelers figure out “off peak day limited any time one way only weekends exclusive” and other confusing fare types (I know that’s not an actual fare! I am exaggerating a tad for comedic effect ;-) so they don’t end up paying £79 to go three blocks. Those ticket machines can be daunting!

So… if you can do it all for them with Trainline or LNER or whatever and have it sorted and seamless, I would vote for that. Even if it does end up costing a very few more quid.

Surely, at the stations mentioned, they will have staff selling the tickets and they can just ask them?

James: maybe. We don’t always see staffed windows these days. If there’s no one at the window, a station worker of any type is generally happy to help, if you can find one. This can be hit and miss. Fellow travelers (like me!) are often available to help… but again, no guarantees, alas.

If the travelers are cool with perhaps having to figure it out themselves, then the OP certainly doesn’t need to pre-book for them. But it didn’t sound like that was the case. I could (obviously!) be wrong. :-)

I’ve used Trainline in the past and have a few recently purchased tickets on the app as I type. My reason for using it in the first place was because I could not purchase directly on the GWR site or app from the U.S. last year—a topic that has been brought up before on this forum.

One benefit of this and possibly other apps is that you can use your phone (I choose the email my tix option), but you can also print out your tickets at home before you travel to have as paper backup with QR code. Something your friends may appreciate.

For me to go to a reseller there has to be a benefit. With trainline the only benefit i can see is its easier to spend your money; not the sort of beneifit I would be looking for. BUT, eveyone has their own way, so no critisisim.

Adding a data point. I generally avoid resellers, but ended up using Trainline to book our tickets on the Eurostar (we ride 15 days from now!). I ran into some weirdness with the Eurostar site, and actually got the mid-level fare cheaper through Trainline. I think the cheapest fare was a few dollars more on Trainline, but I was going to book the mid-line fare anyway, so it worked out.

Thank you everyone for all your helpful information. I'm going to check into your different suggestions & then make a decision as to what I think will be best for my senior friends.

With appreciation,
Peggy

Peggy A, JoAnne, here is something I will give Trainline. It’s sort of like Google Flights in some regards, that is you can see most of the train companies making a route. Generally that is two, departure country company and arrival country company. Occasionally there are private companies as well and those will show up.

I just checked Budapest to Vienna for tomorrow. The Trainline did show all the trains that also appear on the OBB and MAV websites, and it showed and recommended the private RegioJet train without pointing out that it left from a remote station. The other trains were identified as OBB or RailJet. RailJet is OBB, but I don’t think all of the trains identified as OBB were actually OBB, I think a few are MAV. Some are EuroCity trains with Hungarian names at least. On this route it doesn’t matter neither is faster than the other.

I think the company name being shown is whose ticket you will end up with and that makes sense as ...

if you buy from The Trainline the 33€ ticket on MAV website will cost you 52.90€

... which is also what OBB sells the ticket for. Now some may think the ease of using the app makes the extra 19.90€ a good investment. For me not such a great deal.

So I will amend my opinion to say, sure, go to The Trainline to see if there are any private carriers on the route. THEN, go the Private Carrier website and the website of the departure and the arrival country and buy from one of the three …. You can always check back against The Trainline to see if they are cheaper, and as described above that could happen, but I don’t belive it will be the norm.

EDIT: Annother reason to not have a lot of trust outside of the national train companies.

I just checked Budapest to Eger. The Trainline said no tickets available for the 4 dates I checked. Not true. Then I checked Budapest to Gyor. The charge was 5.90 euro and all they list are the RegioJet (private company) ticket. No MAV or OBB trains were shown (both stop in Gyor on the way to Vienna).

The price was about the same as a MAV train on the route (but from a remote station on Budapest).

But the kicker here is that when setting up the The Trainline search you can choose Youth (0 - 25) Adult (26 - 59) or Senior (60+). Well, 65+ in Hungary travel the local trains for free and The Trainline was going to charge me and put me on a private train.

In accurate information and higher prices. Why bother? Ohhh, but not always ... but how do you know unless you do all the research at the other websites and if you are going to do that, just buy the tickets from the people running the trains.

Mr E - I suspect that your post has some excellent advice for using Trainline on the European continent (I don't know enough about those markets in truth) but I don't think the advice applies much o the UK market, where the national rail website will give all the advice you need and will direct you to an appropriate train company to actually buy. All anyone needs to know in addition is that they can but tickets from any one of the UK operating companies rather than one they are directed to.

Johnew52, my advice was not to count on it providing the best prices and best options and if you have to confirm everything by checking the national company websites, why mess with it in the first place.

There are probably specific countries where it will work fine. I dont have that list. If you know your trip is in one of those countries, sure, use it if it provides some benefit.

Thank you everyone.
I've made a decision & will use the National Rail website which can then direct me to the specific companies in terms of buying the tickets. These are 2 elderly ladies from the States so I want to make the process easy for them & they would feel secure with tickets purchased beforehand rather than waiting to purchase at a station.
With great appreciation,
Peggy A

I typically do not use third parties to book hotel rooms, transportation or other. A few times I have booked thru trainline when I couldn't get a transaction thru on the national rail company. I got burned on tickets I purchased and couldn't use during COVID. SNCF wouldn't refund because the tickets were purchased thru Trainline and Trainline wouldn't refund because SNCF canceled. I finally gave up. Seems like the national train sites are becoming more user friendly, so in most cases, I don't see the point of using Trainline or other 3rd parties.