Jacobite tickets

Under FAQ's it says-
"Due to Covid-19 and the social distancing required on-board our trains, we have had to delay sending tickets out until closer to your departure date. This has enabled us to ensure that all passengers travelling on any of our trips will be socially distanced, in 'family bubbles' and inline with current legislation. We apologise for the for this, but these are unprecedented times.

For The Jacobite trips you will receive an email booking confirmation within 1-2 hours of making an online or telephone booking. The tickets, including your seat numbers, will then be sent out via email only, in advance of your travel date.

If you think that you may not have received this or have lost it, please contact us and we can re send this. Please check your junk/spam inbox e-mail folder as occasionally emails can be filtered out by your email provider.

Tickets for Railtours, The Scarborough Spa Express, The Dalesman or Spirit of The Lakes trips are usually sent out a few days before departure, once the timings for the journey have been confirmed with Network Rail. These will be sent out via email and via post.

We are unable to send tickets any earlier than one week before the tour as the railway operating authorities do not send us our confirmed schedule for the day until that time."

So Jacobite tickets are sent electronically, but any other service West Coast Railways operates is only one week before. So you should be all right.

isn31c

Thank you. I missed that in the FAQs.
All set and completed purchase!

Karen,

It is worth keeping an eye on them.

I'd make regular journeys to their webpages.

They have had financial troubles and operating difficulties in the last couple of years.

I'm surprised by what it says in their FAQs quoted above. That information is quite old. We haven't had bubbles (isolated family groups who only associate with each other to prevent the spread of covid and to prevent the bubble catching it) since before Christmas 2020.

I am as covid conscious as anybody, and more than most, but I wouldn't expect to travel in a bubble any more. We always mask and sanitise but virtually nobody else does. I have noticed an uptick in the numbers masking in the last couple of weeks now that the flu is so prevalent and the new variant of covid is out there, but most still don't.

I expect that the company is trying to cover themselves in case of strikes or company financial issues, and if they will be allowed to operate.

But that's a hypothesis - I don't know.

The issue you mention about Royal Mail and strikes is a very real one. Royal Mail was on strike for nearly 20 days in December, packages and post were delayed recently up to six weeks on important packages. 24 and 48 hour services have been taken away by companies and given to private contractors for critical packages because they simply weren't reaching the customer. At the moment they are not on strike but their issues have not been resolved and there has not been a settlement. They can call additional strikes with 14 days notice and more are expected. I personally am waiting for a card that was posted to me in November.

Half a million workers walked off the job on the first of February, across many many companies and government. More are expected to strike on the 6th.

Nigel,
So it’s possible we may still receive our Highland Games tickets, we have 6 months. But the tracking number has always said invalid number.

I thought the US postal service and Italian Poste was bad.

You might. Unbelievably I received a Delay Repay free ticket (compensation for a delayed train) from Northern Rail this morning which was posted on 19 November 2022. That's only had to come from Edinburgh to the Lake District- 150 miles.
Where it's been stuck at for all this time I don't know.
I have two more somewhere in the system currently, from mid December, which might arrive by Easter!!
The original train delay was only 30 minutes, but the postal delay is far worse.

The Royal Mail is usually very efficient at delivering on time, just not during industrial action. Strikes are meant to disrupt and the Royal Mail strikes did do so.

The backlogs are being cleared, but the blacklogs are being dealt with in the way most people deal with in trays, be it in e-mail or a physical one. From the top down, so the newest first.

Talk about great customer service! The person I emailed at the Braemar Highland Games emailed me this morning asking for my phone number. She called a few minutes later and assured me to not worry. Either I’d eventually get the tickets, they’d get returned, or end up in outer space. She was going to set up voucher that we’d pickup at the event for tickets. And if I received tickets, to let her know

She also commented that’s lots of people asking where tickets are.

Karen,

I am pleased to hear that the Highland games tickets issue has been resolved, and thanks for reporting some good positive news to everyone.