Rail-booking shenanigans

Like many skiers and snowboarders, I was up early on Wednesday morning. SNCF put tickets on sale for journeys between 8th January and 29th March 2026. 

At 5am UK time, there were seats available for February half term. And at 7.30am UK time, there were also seats available for February half term. This was good news. 

In terms of pricing, I found that you could get a return ticket from Paris many Alpine destination stations (such as Moutiers, Aime-La-Plagne, Bourg-Saint-Maurice, Oulx, Cluses, St Gervais, Grenoble) for about £260  - £350 return.  

Or, a return from London at Feb half term for about £650. 

But for January dates, fares were much cheaper.  I found tickets for about £250 return all the way from London. 

But I was shocked at how some of the rail-booking websites like Trainline and Rail Europe still misfunction. Below is an account of what I found, with screenshots. 

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Rail-booking errors on rail-booking websites

OK, seriously. It's 2025 and this kind of crap should not be happening. But it is. These rail-booking errors have been for years and years with no sign of abating. 

If the train operators won't fix it, you need to be aware of it. Then, you can work around it. 

1. The starting-point problem

When you use a rail-booking website, you need to put your starting station and your destination. 

Options on the Trainline website include 'London any' and 'London St Pancras International'.  

Either of them seem viable. But in fact, if you enter London St Pancras International, you get no result - see screenshot below: 

If you saw the above screenshot and didn't know any better, you'd be forgiven for believing that tickets weren't available. That could mean that you end up not travelling by train. A very bad result. 

Only if you were suspicious of results on rail-booking websites, as from bitter experience I am, might you try the search in a different way, to test whether there are actually tickets available. 

Lo and behold, when you try using 'London - any' as a starting point, journeys from St Pancras do appear - for exactly the same dates and destination. 

This is so utterly ridiculous. Millions upon millions of pounds of railway infrastructure and the travellers who want to book are not being shown available journeys, due to some computer-code glitch, caused by an over-complicated booking system that purports to make things simple. 

I tried this again this morning, using different dates. This is what you get if you start with 'London St Pancras International' - only one result. 

And this is what you get if you put 'London (Any)' - you get proper results. 

It's just bonkers. 

Trainline are probably the UK's leading rail-booking website in terms of volume. It made £86 million pounds of profit in 2024. 

Doesn't it do its due dilligence and test its own website for problems like this? 

I've contacted Trainline to let them know about the problem and to ask their response. When I hear back from them I'll update this article.