maniacmartin

I needed to buy some train tickets today, after getting the times from National Rail. Of course, National Rail don’t sell tickets, instead referring you to the train companies themselves. Well, I know what you’re thinking - that I could just buy tickets from my station. My station doesn’t have a ticket machine, nor is it staffed. So I try a few train companies’ sites. It seems they all subcontract our to The Train Line’s buggy system. The Train Line is a horrid site to use. It relies heavily on sessions, needs you to register before it shows you prices and generally irks me all of the time.

By chance I stumbled onto GNER’s site. They have recently moved to their own custom-designed ticket sales system, and I must say they’ve done a very good job indeed. Not only does it have a Web 2.0 “feel” (being clean and intuitive), it clearly explains the difference between the ticket times, and has AJAX light-boxes displaying each route after you click the more info buttons on them.

Furthermore, it shows a list of prices and a list of possible route-times. Clicking the price you want greys out the routes you are then not allowed to use, and clicking the route you want will grey out the ticket types that can’t be used with this route. Details of train changes are updated in realtime using AJAX as you highlight different routes. It also managed to find a great deal more routes than The Train Line did, in less time. And what’s more, you can of course buy tickets for any UK train from any UK train company. In future, I’ll be buying all of my advance tickets online from GNER, as their website is much more intuitive than the others. Good work GNER!