Author Topic: Booking bikes on trains without actually interacting with a human being  (Read 2606 times)

Any apps or websites do this at the minute?

EDIT - TransPennine, and I assume any of their other brands, let you do it again.

jiberjaber

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Re: Booking bikes on trains without actually interacting with a human being
« Reply #1 on: 06 August, 2018, 11:14:18 am »
Any apps or websites do this at the minute?

Last time I had to bail whilst out on a bike I needed to do this, so I used https://www.hulltrains.co.uk/ to good effect.  :thumbsup:
Regards,

Joergen

Re: Booking bikes on trains without actually interacting with a human being
« Reply #2 on: 06 August, 2018, 11:19:25 am »
Any apps or websites do this at the minute?

Last time I had to bail whilst out on a bike I needed to do this, so I used https://www.hulltrains.co.uk/ to good effect.  :thumbsup:
:thumbsup:

essexian

Re: Booking bikes on trains without actually interacting with a human being
« Reply #3 on: 06 August, 2018, 11:59:45 am »
ScotRail is also good for this.

I use them for booking on Virgin Trains as Virgin Trains website doesn't let you do so.


Re: Booking bikes on trains without actually interacting with a human being
« Reply #4 on: 06 August, 2018, 05:24:21 pm »
ScotRail is also good for this.

I use them for booking on Virgin Trains as Virgin Trains website doesn't let you do so.

Madness, isn't it! There's obviously ways to hook into an API to get cycle booking information, which is presumably what ScotRail do, so why don't Virgin Trains do this on their own site?
Old enough to know better, but young enough to do it anyway

Re: Booking bikes on trains without actually interacting with a human being
« Reply #5 on: 06 August, 2018, 05:31:03 pm »
I use Transpennine, who will let you book bikes online, and send you the tickets by post for no charge.
Not fast & rarely furious

tweeting occasional in(s)anities as andrewxclark

Re: Booking bikes on trains without actually interacting with a human being
« Reply #6 on: 06 August, 2018, 05:35:30 pm »
So yeah, a while back everyone changed systems so you couldn't book bikes online, seems like now a fair few of them do. Easy.

Re: Booking bikes on trains without actually interacting with a human being
« Reply #7 on: 07 August, 2018, 05:18:50 pm »
I use Transpennine, who will let you book bikes online, and send you the tickets by post for no charge.

I used to use TPE but their web-site stopped working for me so I switched to South Western Trains.
same deal; book bike spaces, free 1st class post, no booking fee and, if you collect them, Nectar points.

Manotea

  • Where there is doubt...
Re: Booking bikes on trains without actually interacting with a human being
« Reply #8 on: 22 September, 2019, 04:19:15 pm »
Trains booked... Train up and ride most of the way home.... shouldn't that be the other way round? Possibly... I was going to do the Selby thing but no train reservations... then I realised I could have another half hour in bed and go all the way for much the same price...

rogerzilla

  • When n+1 gets out of hand
Re: Booking bikes on trains without actually interacting with a human being
« Reply #9 on: 22 September, 2019, 06:42:32 pm »
GWR does it but you get the same reject message whether all bike spaces are taken or one section of the route doesn't require reservations.  It's utterly useless if you have one of these sections on your journey, since you don't really know if it's booked or not.  They will usually check and reserve for you on Twitter.

Anyway, when you get on a Class 800, only one bike at a time* fits in the two bike spaces, which are probably full of luggage so it's academic.  I've pretty much given up hope of taking anything other than a Brompton on a train now.

*tried with two touring bikes, 44cm dropped bars.  The train manager watched and agreed with us it was impossible,  GWR allocate the same width for two bikes as Cross Country do for one bike!
Hard work sometimes pays off in the end, but laziness ALWAYS pays off NOW.

Re: Booking bikes on trains without actually interacting with a human being
« Reply #10 on: 20 October, 2019, 09:26:19 pm »
I rode a DIY Cheltenham to Newport 200km a few years ago and used Twitter to reserve a space en route once I had a reasonably accurate ETA, this was CrossCountry, it all went very smoothly.

fuaran

  • rothair gasta
Re: Booking bikes on trains without actually interacting with a human being
« Reply #11 on: 20 October, 2019, 10:12:08 pm »
Can you book a bike space with a smartcard ticket? Seems ScotRail keen to promote use of their smartcard.
It would be handier than going into town to pick up paper tickets. Though I suppose a paper ticket may be handy to wave at the conductor, to prove you have booked a space.

FifeingEejit

  • Not Small
Re: Booking bikes on trains without actually interacting with a human being
« Reply #12 on: 20 October, 2019, 10:30:37 pm »
Can you book a bike space with a smartcard ticket? Seems ScotRail keen to promote use of their smartcard.
It would be handier than going into town to pick up paper tickets. Though I suppose a paper ticket may be handy to wave at the conductor, to prove you have booked a space.

The Smartcard option seems to dissappear as soon as I've added a bike booking :-(
I've used mine twice...

Actually no once.
The first time I had an off-peak day return to Edinburgh, but of course there's an hour and a half after the Waverly off-peak where all the trains into Fife that go past Markinch were non-Scotrail
and the second time the conductors machine wasn't working for it.
I've had slightly better success with the separate but exactly the same chip type and software card I got from Stagecoach because there's an increasing number of ticket types you can only get on smartcard in Dundee/North Fife as we're the guinea pigs for ticketing integration