Booking A Train Ticket To The Hague From London
The last time, I went to The Hague, I just went to the Eurostar site and booked one ticket to Any Dutch Station.
But now, this simple system has been discontinued at the behest of the Dutch government. For what reason, I will not speculate although, I have had various opinions given to me by my Dutch friends. I’ll give my view after I return from The Netherlands.
So this time, I’ve booked a single ticket to Brussels on Eurostar.
The train I shall be riding on Tuesday, will get me to Brussels just after mid-day. I shall be trying to buy a ticket to The Hague on the convenient 13:18 departure between the two capitals, when I arrive in Brussels.
It’s a real downgrade from the previous service, in that I shall have to change trains at Rotterdam as well. The direct train has been discontinued. I’ve taken that train several times and the standard is similar to what I you get on the fast London to Ipswich and Norwich trains.
So I’ll be getting a quicker high-speed train, but I’d prefer a direct train. In the UK, when I go say from London to Liverpool, I always book direct trains for convenience. I also don’t want to have to wait on a cold platform for a train to arrive. The connection in Rotterdam might be easy, but I’ve only been to the station there, some years ago and can’t remember it.
I thought for safety, I would book a later train in case, I couldn’t fathom out how to buy the ticket in Brussels.
So I went to the SNCB web site to book one. Incidentally, Eurostar allows you to enter Rotterdam into their site, but doesn’t allow you to book tickets, just telling you that there are no tickets available. To find where to book, I looked up how on Seat 61, which gave me the address of the SNCB web site to book the ticket from Brussels to The Hague.
Just imagine someone having to book a ticket urgently, for either business or family reasons and wanting to get to say Utrecht. They would give up or just book to Brussels knowing or even just thinking that they could get a train from there.
So I looked up the SNCB web site and found these trains from Brussels to Den Haag.
13:18 – Dutch high speed train – 15:02 – £21.42
13:52 – Thalys – 15:26 – £38.47
13:56 – Local Train – 2 changes – 16:41 – £24.35
15:18 – Dutch high speed train – 17:02 – £21.42
So by travelling on the slow Dutch train, you have two changes and pay more.
In the end I bought a ticket on the 13:56.
But I had to pay an extra booking fee, just like you don’t do on any British train booked on the train company’s web site. Although I had to pay a similar amount on Eurostar.
The ticket is two sheets of A4 paper, one for each leg of the journey. We may go on about the old British Rail-era orange tickets, but they fit nicely in a wallet.
What do you do incidentally, if you’re booking these tickets on a laptop on a train coming to London to get the Eurostar? Or you’re doing it late at night, and the printer runs out of paper?
I don’t think the SNCB web site gave you an alternative.
Train Ticketing For Football
In the last few months, I’ve been to Barnsley, Birmingham, Bolton, Brighton, Hull, Leeds, Leicester and Wolverhampton to see Ipswich Town play. Although in some cases like Hull and Leicester the football wasn’t the best, I’ve not had much of a problem with the trains. Except of course in getting to Ipswich, where they have chosen match day Saturdays to rebuild the line.
Usually, I travel First Class either one or both ways. On the Wolverhampton trip, where I could be sure of my times, I used Advance tickets that cost just £31 with a Senior Railcard. Some of the supporters, I met at the game, were rather surprised at the price.
But sometimes, I’ll get Off Peak Second Class and pay the upgrade, if it is available, like it is on Virgin. GreaterAnglia and others.
Next Saturday, I’m going to see Ipswich in the FA Cup at Aston Villa. For that game, I’ll book the outrun on a specific train using an Advance First Class ticket on Virgin, as they seem cheaper than Chiltern and stop in New Street, where I can get the train to Witton for Villa Park. but coming back, I’ll get an ordinary Off Peak Standard Class ticket, as that will mean I can get any train. If I want to upgrade to First Class it will cost me £10 on the train.
I’ve just booked the two tickets and they cost me a total of £31.65.
Told Off For Not Buying A Cheap Ticket
I came back from Liverpool to Birmingham by London Midland. I didn’t have much time to get a ticket at Lime Street, especially as the one machine near my platform was broken. I was told that I could get a ticket on the train, which in fact I did.
The inspector said, I should have bought it on-line before I left, as that way I’d have got it for a fiver. I can’t remember what I paid, but I did get a normal Off Peak.
My trouble though had been that I might have stayed later in Liverpool and gone straight back to London missing the football in Birmingham.
I suspect that London Midland have been getting complaints about overpriced tickets and they’re trying to do something.
Wouldn’t it be much simpler, if we had some sort of electronic system, that worked out your cheapest ticket.
A few more ticket machines at Lime Street would have helped too!
Is This The Cheapest Rail Ticket In The UK?
Look at the price on this ticket.
Is This The Cheapest Rail Ticket In The UK?
The train wasn’t bad either, even if it was an immaculate nearly-new Class 172.
So £1.25 return was definitely good value.
92 Clubs – A Small Difficulty With Ticketing
I tried to buy my ticket to Yeovil this morning, but there appeared tobe a problem with all of the rail ticketing web sites. So I had to book later in the afternoon.
The outcome was that my ticket to Yeovil appeared to be more expensive than usual. But try proving it!
I have just looked at the prices of the same trains for the rest of the month.
It doesn’t appear to be the cheapest route, compared to some I’ve sampled in my challenge.
Improving The Rail Ticket System
With all the tickets, I’ve been buying for my challenge, I’m starting to get strong views about how the system should be improved.
Global Account
The first thing that is needed is a global account that works for all of the train company sites.
It would be a complete profile and contain.
- All your personal details.
- Your preferred station for picking up tickets.
- Your preferred seating arrangements.
- Your credit card details.
It would of course have all of the tickets you’d ordered in a database, so you could use them for purposes like calculating expenses or rebooking a similar trip on another day.
The site would be run by ATOC and not by a company such as the trainline, which charges you a booking fee and doesn’t always give you the most logical routes.
So let’s say I want to book a London Liverpool train on Virgin similar to one I bought a month ago. I would click the Book Similar link on the previous ticket and this would put me into the Virgin site, showing me the prices I would be charged I would then book as normal, using the global preferences. It would make the process a lot simpler.
User-Defined Pick-Up Passwords
To pick up tickets you need the eight-digit reference number. Recently, I picked up seven tickets, with different reference numbers in one visit to Kings Cross. It was a nightmare, especially as my left-hand isn’t 100%. I do text the reference numbers to my mobile phone, but that only simiplifies it a small amount.
If you could define your own pick-up password, then the process would be much simpler. I might use VG1234 for Virgin, where 1234 is the last four digits of my phone number. This would mean the pick-up is as secure as it is now, but I should also be allowed at my risk to pick up the tickets on a credit card only. I would always use a simple password, I could remember.
Text Alerts
Virgin and others can text me details of my trip, but they send too much information and we need more messages.
I would just like the eight-digit reference followed say by Euston-Liverpool Lime Street, as this would then display the reference, when I held up the phone without opening the message, so it would be easier to pick-up the tickets.
But how about these messages.
- An alert if there was any engineering work or delay before the train leaves.
- An alert a specific number of minutes before the train leaves.
- An alert with the platform number. This might clear out the space in front of the departure boards.
- Alerts if the train was going to arrive late.
The Anonymous Widower 