When I try to plan a journey on the Railplanner app from my home station of Lancaster (UK) to the UK border at Harwich International, using one of the two days of “domestic” availability allowed, I am told that a €6 “reservation fee” is payable on the Lancaster to London leg of the journey. As there is not usually any charge for reservations in the UK why is this? And what happens if I just get on the train without one?
Best answer by Al_G
View originalTrains in UK (apart from sleepers and Eurostar) do not require any reservations. You can just use the pass and sit on unreserved seats just as you would with any ordinary unreserved ticket.
All you need do is fill in the trains you use on your pass and you are free to board.
If you wish you can get free reservations at ticket offices by showing your pass.
By making an account on the GWR.com website you can also use their free seat reservation tool.
Avanti West Coast, as well as cancelling a lot of trains, have also been messing around with the reservations system so don’t be surprised if you cannot get reservations for their trains, it will be due to them not releasing them rather then them being full.
Please be aware that the Interrail planner runs offline and with out of date and sometimes incomplete timetable information, do not rely on it for planning journeys. Use National rail enquiries or your own choice of UK app/website and for other countries bahn.com, oebb.at or the DB and OEBB apps are good for much of Europe.
Trains in UK (apart from sleepers and Eurostar) do not require any reservations. You can just use the pass and sit on unreserved seats just as you would with any ordinary unreserved ticket.
All you need do is fill in the trains you use on your pass and you are free to board.
If you wish you can get free reservations at ticket offices by showing your pass.
By making an account on the GWR.com website you can also use their free seat reservation tool.
Avanti West Coast, as well as cancelling a lot of trains, have also been messing around with the reservations system so don’t be surprised if you cannot get reservations for their trains, it will be due to them not releasing them rather then them being full.
Please be aware that the Interrail planner runs offline and with out of date and sometimes incomplete timetable information, do not rely on it for planning journeys. Use National rail enquiries or your own choice of UK app/website and for other countries bahn.com, oebb.at or the DB and OEBB apps are good for much of Europe.
Re the point about them not being full, currently Avanti is running an interim reduced timetable and even then missing a lot of trains so many of their trains are indeed full.
It is true that operators like LNER have an unreservable carriage (maybe Avanti as well), but it fills very quickly and rarely has manys seat available after its starting station for unreserved passengers down the line.
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