What train station to take in the UK?

The train to Lincoln leaves from Kings Cross.

To find this out for any trip to/from London, you can go to http://www.nationalrail.co.uk and choose "London" (with no station) in the journey planner. The list you get back will show the actual station name.

If you go to the National Rail website and plug in London for your departure station and Lincoln as your arrival station it will give you the answer as well as what train line goes there. Pick the first choice for London which is any station and the search results will show you it is King's Cross.

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/

(Only answering this because all the UK folks are doubtless snoozing away!)

editing to add: Laura and I are apparently sharing a brain this evening!

Thank you! I'm getting closer to understanding this - appreciate the help.

I'm told I don't really need reservations to take this journey when I'm not in peak commute time. But, will it be cheaper if I reserve in advance rather than buy the ticket there?

I'm not sure on the answer, but am piggybacking on this question since I'm seeking very similar information. I will be traveling from London to Bath for a few days in September. I ultimately may decide that flexibility is worth more to me and opt to wait to book, but I'm curious what, if any, cost advantage there is for doing so in advance.

You need to go to that route planner linked above. Sometimes you will have a significant savings on tickets sometimes not. Two years ago I went to Bath and it was much cheaper to buy in advance. This year, looking at going to Salisbury there is no difference, but there is still a difference in the fares to Bath. If you look at an advanced fare to Bath (I picked the furthest out I could which is in to August) and it is 14.50£. Ticket prices for the same time tomorrow are 43.00£ so a pretty big difference. The fares to Salisbury look like they are around 37.00£ all the time so it does not look like it is advantageous to purchase ahead for me this year.

You just have to run the dates thru the journey planner. Perhaps when Nigel or one of the other UK folks sees this in the morning they can offer an explanation of why things are fared so differently. The 2 examples I gave are different train lines.

You can buy an 'anytime' ticket. It costs about 10% more but you can use it on any day at any time. Booking way in advance on trains in the UK will usually save you a significant amount of money.

Tickets are available 12 weeks out for the best prices. The cheapest is naming the times of the trains you will be using, but these are non-flexible, so if you miss it, you would have to buy another ticket. Usually cheaper after 9.30 and cheaper again after 10.00, but there are exceptions! Using faster intercity trains can be dearer than slower local services.

Lincoln rail station splits the city's shopping zone in two, so it is right in the centre.

It is easy to explain why some routes have "Advance" tickets which can be quite cheap - but very restricted - and some don't.

Different private companies run the trains on different routes - sometimes competing on the same route or portion - and they all have different rules. Some offer Advance tickets, some don't. The criteria for offering those tickets are different.

So it does not surprise me that the tickets available to Lincoln would be different than those available to Bath.

Rail pricing in Great Britain is aggressively market priced - and led the trend in other European countries of comparable size.

However, this masks some regional variations, some historic, and some that have developed over the 20 odd years that the operators have been private.

Within the boundaries roughly of the old 'Network South East' area around London pricing has in many areas remained more traditional in terms of peak/off-peak/day returns, and use of deep discounting through advanced fixed-reservation pricing is patchy, although not non existent, especially on routes with keen coach competition. By contrast on the long distance routes you can find fare structures where the most expensive can easily be 10 times the cheapest.

What has not been done in general is to require reservations with flexible tickets.

Although it is still possible to buy reservations with flexible tickets, if you want a guaranteed seat on your target train but flexibility if you miss it.

Increasingly the timetable includes the symbol that reservations are advisable on more and more services. This is because capacity is lagging behind demand.