The Difference Between National Rail and Trainline: Which One Offers Better Value for Money?

When it comes to booking train tickets in Great Britain, two major platforms dominate the market: National Rail and Trainline. However, which one is better?

This is what this document will attempt to explore. Certainly one is cheaper than the other but one might have a better user experience, and you as a customer might feel loyal to one brand over another. It sometimes depends on your individual needs as a customer, although if it's affordability you want, there is one clear winner.

While both provide access to British train services, they operate differently and offer varying levels of value for money.

If you're looking for the most affordable and reliable way to book train travel, it's essential to understand the differences between these two well known brands.

What is National Rail?

National Rail is the official source for train information in Britain. While it does not sell tickets directly, it provides a centralised platform where users can find train times, fare information, and links to purchase tickets from official train operating companies (TOCs).

It's often referred to as 'NRE' for short too, which is the original brand name for it, 'national rail enquiries'.

Key Benefits of National Rail:

• No Booking Fees – Unlike Trainline, National Rail does not charge extra fees for ticket purchases.

• Direct Booking With Train Operators – When purchasing through National Rail, you are redirected to the train company’s official website, ensuring that you get the best prices and any exclusive operator-specific discounts.

• Reliable, Official Information – As the trusted source for train travel, National Rail provides real-time train schedules, service updates, and disruption alerts.

• Access to All Railcards and Discounts – Passengers can find and use various discount railcards, including the 16-25 Railcard, Senior Railcard, and Disabled Persons Railcard.

What is Trainline?

Trainline is a private ticket retailer that sells train tickets for Britain and European rail services. It acts as an intermediary between customers and train operating companies, offering features such as mobile ticketing and journey planning tools.

Key Features of Trainline:

• User-Friendly App – Trainline's mobile app allows for easy bookings, mobile tickets, and live journey tracking.

• European Rail Services – Unlike National Rail, Trainline also provides tickets for European train operators, making it a convenient option for international travelers.

• Split Ticketing Feature – Trainline automatically searches for cheaper split ticketing options to help passengers save money.

National Rail vs. Trainline: Which One Offers Better Value?

Why National Rail Offers Better Value for Money

If your priority is affordability and avoiding extra fees, National Rail is the superior choice.

Since National Rail directs you to the train operators' websites, you can book directly without paying extra booking fees. Additionally, if a train company offers exclusive discounts, you’ll find them when booking through National Rail but not necessarily on Trainline.

On the other hand, Trainline’s added features, such as the mobile app and split ticketing, can be useful for frequent travelers who value convenience.

However, these benefits come at a cost, with additional fees often making tickets more expensive than booking through an official train operator.

Conclusion

For the best value for money, nationalrail.co.uk is the go-to platform for train travel in Britain. It ensures passengers get the lowest available fares without unnecessary booking fees and provides direct access to train operators’ deals and discounts.

While Trainline offers a convenient experience with additional features, its fees mean that passengers may end up paying more than necessary.

For budget-conscious travelers looking to save money on rail fares, National Rail is the clear winner.

On SimilarWeb at Traffic volumes nationalrail.co.uk also gets more traffic in Britain from customer visits but trainline.com gets more traffic on the Continent.*

*SimilarWeb 2024

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Google Penguin refresh end to great Summer

Google - lets have a party

Here we are again. I remember the Google Penguin fan-fare last year in April, it was nerve wracking.

At the time, nobody seemed to understand what to do - we were all ambling round waiting for the dust to settle so we could settle down and analyse the data.

It was funny; a lot of so called marketing experts from a few bigger digital agencies (no names) waffled and squirmed about the algorithm. The truth was, nobody really knew - it was all waffle.

I've been involved in search marketing now since 2006; not a long space of time compared to some industry giants that frequent Moz and Search Engine Land. However, I do come from an English teaching background and worked in information retrieval for several years as a library assistant so I picked up lots of positive habits working inside a real search engine...!

Once again, a Penguin algorithm change rolled out last weekend. Matt Cutts made some flippant comment on Twitter a few months ago about it going to be a 'great summer' - no it wasn't. Not for SEO's working with demanding clients and expectations.

Often with these things it takes a degree of learned skills and also instinct to spot changes to a website as a result of an algorithm change. We've come a long way since last year. We now know a great deal thanks to the research being done.

But being bombarded with Google algorithms doesn't make it a 'great summer', or year for that matter. Google isn't getting better at providing great search results. It's making it harder for the legit SEO and easier for the gamers.

However, time will how far this recent Hummingbird impacts the SERPS, and for that matter SME's up and down the UK.

Surrey - The Seven Sisters - Pirbright Pain

The Seven Sisters... words of terror to anyone that knows them. And it, Pirbright.

Pain, suffering but physical perfection

Typical. Such a word conveys goodness, light, safety. No. Pirbright. It's a deception. At the time of walking, no RUNNING over them many many times, not only I but more or less everyone felt like dying. 7 hills. Why are they given a female personification? The pain in your chest and legs was like nothing I had ever felt. I was only 20, if I did it now, I would die a horrible death.
Physical fitness is wonderful, the sensation of accomplishment it creates is unrivaled. Never I have felt such joy and exultation at achieving physical perfection. The pain and suffering was worth it.

At the time instructors and trainers behaved like animals; you felt like they hated you and hated weakness. It was about power and humiliation, to make you appear soft and insignificant. Only when you crossed the finishing line did you understand the trainers were for you, on your side; they wanted you to succeed and win. At the time it was absolute chaos - the noise and scream were ceaseless. I was fortunate that in my own pain I could tolerate it because I have practiced before I journeyed here. By the time of Pirbright and the Seven Sisters, I was fitter than I had been. Running then over those hellish hills, I passed the occasional body writhing on the ground in pain - there was a moment during the first attempt when I wanted to give up, I hated it. I saw someone crying in pain; they looked ridiculous in their suffering. I forces myself that I wouldn't demean myself and pride was more powerful than pain. I went on and completed it. The end result was even more pride at the achievement and those that had fail were pushed to an even greater extreme to achieve what I and others had.

There are no platitudes spared; the instructors were merciless. They had to be. Not everyone is self-motivated. Some are more equal than others.
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Astonishing Experiences

Hard Labour for 3 months

It wasn't me - but the choice was an inevitable one. I resigned myself to the fact that I deserved my fate and if this was it, then so be it.
It made me a tougher and more resilient individual and by God I needed to be. The first few weeks were an utter nightmare - in all truth, I started to question why I was there and why I decided to do this. I expect many do question their motives for joining this insane institution.
I really wanted to go back to the peaceful life and my books but I knew deep down that I would stagnate back home, and nothing much would happen. People and friends had moved on so why go back home?
I accepted where I was and decided to remain there. I did for more than 3 years.
But to my surprise, once I got through the initial months of training and was posted to my regiment 8 months later, life became good and full of surprises.
The first 3 months were atrocious - whatever hard labour must have been like in Victorian times, I was in it. 3 months hard labour. My offence? Ignorance. After that, I left the prison and got, amazingly, weekends off for the first time in what felt like years.
I found myself on nights out in Soho, Bracknell, Camberley, places I thought I'd never visit. I then ended up driving across the Yorkshire Moors for 2 months. At the time I hated it and loathed myself but in hindsight the first 8 months were an utter peak and trough of astonishing experiences. Had I known then what I know now 20 years later I would have savoured every moment...

On a Train to an Uncertain Future

To Pirbright

 

I was in a train,
Going to a very uncertain future.

Outside I could see the rain,

In a land that looked stranger.

 

All the peculiar thoughts in my head,

Amounted to a great deal of dread.

Looking around at the other faces,

I realised we must all be nutcases.

 

I ask myself why I’ve chosen this fate.

What’ll be gained from this confusion?

All I can do is learn and tolerate,

The lonely and naive path I’ve chosen.

 

I’ve never really travelled away from my county,
But I felt my adventure could rival Dante.

I stepped from the train and into strange country,

Knowing I was about to loose my liberty with the wave of a hand…

 

August 1994

 

 

What had I done? Well, being trapped in the recession I was in at that time, jumping on that train to what felt like oblivion, it all seemed like the right thing to do. What else was there? Back home friends had gone or moved away or grown ever distant. There were no jobs, no prospects, no education. Only fags, boardgames, books, mulled wine and nothing much else.
I remember vividly waiting on the platform full of of feeling of trepidation that I was not as fearful as I should have been of the unknown. I was very ignorant of anything outside my own sphere.

Friends Come and Go

Falling in love can be like droplets of rain falling to the earth, especially when you are young. At least it was for me; I never knew what I wanted exactly but loved the feeling of immersion in another person's life, enveloping your own inside theirs so the two became interchangeable.

It's 1994 still and I'm surrounded by uncertainty across the globe. A lot happened in Europe in this period and I often felt I was outside of it when I should have been inside it. As usual finding consolation in wine and books.

Falling in love made the boredam of life and being on the outside go away, it gave reading books a sort of meaningless equation - books were not the means to an end. Literature simply delayed the inevitable destruction of oneself.

We were all growing distant, each of us trying to struggle in our way through the vagaries of experience, and some were better than it than others. Finding a lover, someone to share more depth and intimacy with sort of produced an intense feeling of calmness.

The only problem was when that calmness came crashing down to be replaced with its oposite on the spectrum - deep anger and loss - life felt pointless. That's the wonderful feeling of being young, one can pick oneself up so easily.

When relationships end you understand just how much you love a person, and whether or not it's worth fighting for. On this ocassion it was not, despite my feeling of loss and isolation.

It spurned me ever onwards to find that escape route away from the boredam and stagnation.

Epiphany

It happened and things changed. Don't they always?

You look around you and so many things appear clear but when you delve further you notice the elements in each object or person. Everything is subjective and pays tribute to our interpretations, without which nothing would exist.

Whether you are depressed or joyful, you sometimes get a moment of self-realisation. An epiphany. Why didn't I think of that before?

It's been a long time coming but I'm back. Joy caused it, not depression.

I had an epiphany - a self realisation moment that it was time again to engage.

A lot had changed but I going back again to revisit the past and catch up with the future.

I love semiotics. I love literature even more. What is love? Do we have love juice like link juice that we can share? Can you give too much love, so that you die?

Back then I had no idea the vehicle I'm using now would begin to shape my life as much as it has.

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Tokyo - The Walls are Creaping In - Will I see Her?

Infinite Spring Falls

Where is my Love?

I know you don’t dwell in the obsidian tower;

I know you don’t dwell among the doves.

I know you don’t dwell among the flowers;

But in the gardens of the Angels of Grace.

Where I am now, I imagine your face,

Carved of marble and lace.

Eyes of green sapphire breathe of passion.

Our spirits of ascension,

Rise to the occasion.

These are the dreams that I desire.

They sing and dance and feast with exquisite fruits.

I will always be there with magical wings on my feet.

I will fly over the walls of the elegant garden,

Of infinite spring falls.

Where the nymphs and elves gather round.

Expostulation and Reply

"Why, William, on that old grey stone,

Thus for the length of half a day,

Why William, sit you thus alone,

And dream your time away?"

William Wordsworth 1798

That's what we were doing, not quite in the Lake District but trapped in the towns, suffocating and choking from the degredation and loss, dreaming was part of the survival; and our literary pretentions were part of that dreaming. It was our escape to reach Windemere and Coniston before the Spring's end and reach it we did, in a clapped out car, carrying a tent with holes, and pitched it exactly where we wanted. It was some small fortune to be so lucky for a change.

The air was fresh and minds were cleansed - sounds odd to say that now but it was true, in spite of the amount of cigarettes smoked and beer drank. But everybody knew that our paths may not cross again and indeed they didn't. All that was important was the literature and the symbols around us, the signs in the trees and rivers, the postures and expressions of the campers and locals in the pubs. All the signs gave us were more questions.

The Tables Turned

Up! Up! my Friend, and quit your books;

Or surely you'll grow double:

Up! Up! my Friend, and clear your looks;

Why all this toil and trouble?

William Wordsworth 1798

It is a dull and endless strife thinking of the return but the feeling of release while climbing the hills was unique and not felt again for a long time. It was probably the sense of freedom, leaving that well trodden path to Trough of Bowland at the weekends... this was different and the company was important. And what was very funny was inadvertantly seeing and meeting symbols you recognised that moved in the same circles and spoke with humour. That surely can't be matched again? The Tables had turned and what was left were the summer weeks to enjoy by the metaphorical fire, drinking mulled wine and cherry brandy, smoking in the garden and thinking of those simple pleasures lost, and a fear rose up in our breasts that the change would be calamitous.

The Symbiosis of Eros

Named after a house belonging to one Robert Baker, a tailor famous for selling Piccadills, a collar for suits.

But used for Capital Punishment centuries ago although we didn't know it when we sat there smoking cigarettes after our jaunts down Shaftesbury Av. The abbreviation DM is connected with a club at the bottom of the street called the LimeLight, probably not there anymore. It was neon green like the famous TDK ad board. This jaunt was long in the planning and how we got there with virtually no money was an odd achievement for Giro-jockies.
----------------------

He felt lost and silly.

The underground was full of staring faces.

Did he have wanker written on his forehead?

Or better still ‘here is a provincial lad’.

He felt in that moment, weak and exposed.

His lack of education and life was evident,

In his composure and witless conversation.

So what did he have, sat there, desperate

In Picadilly Circus?

Not Much.

Looking round at happy middle class students,

They seemed to enjoy life and pleasure.

He understood only isolation and suffering.

But still had hope.

I will follow Suit

There was a time when this kind of thing, cameraderie,

was frowned upon by working class types. But the one in the middle was no exception - I was soon to join him anyway. It was the early 90's and John Major's recession was a blight on all our futures. To take the Queen's shilling was an escape from the drudgery of going round in circles and bumping into ex-cons and druggies. The only thing keeping us sane were nights by the metaphorical fire with a brew and a book. However, the problem was that this literary life was at odds with the one outside and the two clashed often with friendships being the sacrifice. But in the end those friendsships proved to be superficial anyway. The literary moments were a break from a harsher side of a life of meaninglessness and in hindsite were an absolute tonic.

The Truth - there's a Beginning and an End

Talking candidly - I feel I must in this instance -

there wasn't much else to life. There had been a morass in indulgence and violent ignorANCE. Some might recount the hedonism of Madchester and the Hacienda but I was too poor to go that far. Trough of Bowland in an old clapped out Ford Cortina was the limit, breathing in the toxic fumes of the otherside of hedonistic life (hence the semiotic nature of this blog). Have you ever tried a bucket? Not the spade version. I hated it. The first time I tried it I felt guilty and horrid. There's more to life. There's music and emotion and feeling sorry for yourself. That DM music was the escape - it happened because young people think they will live forever and have the power to shape the world. You think you will fall in love and have the world's largest orgasm and be romantic at the same time. That's what the music provoked; it saved the mind from going mad.

Lexical Domination

18 months ago the international media picked up on President Chirac’s outburst at an EU’s conference on business and subsequently ran biased, sycophantic, and expectedly liberalistic stories about the global spread of English. 

Needless to say, my own article falls into one of those three categories. I am, as a native speaker, subject to the grammatical law of my language as each person is to their own. I am also privileged because I can communicate almost anywhere in the world and be understood, but my language is at the forefront of ‘linguicide’, along with Chinese, Spanish, French and Arabic, destroying minority languages, along with culture and customs in many cases.

Chirac’s concern was not at someone speaking English but at one of his own countrymen doing so. The French government has laws in place, concerning the cultural value of French that protects that value from the influence of foreign languages, principally Anglo-Saxon, and rightly so.

Other countries such as Bhutan, Iran, or semi-autonomous regions like Basque [and Tibet] adopt similar methods, of varying degrees, of protecting their cultures from outside influences; or recently the newly elected President of Bolivia promised to decrease the predominance of Spanish in favour of local indigenous tongues. In Italy, I must watch a foreign TV programme in dubbed Italian, but in Portugal I can hear the original language, perhaps because the Portuguese government is less sensitive as there are a 150 million speakers of Portuguese in Brazil. 

In India, a sub-continent with hundreds of dialects, its parliament speaks in English, an alien language, otherwise each speech community would never be able to agree on whose dialect to use. This was the reason for the creation of Esperanto in the EU because it was not indigenous to any state; a wonderful idea in principle except that it failed, not for any innate error but for lack of native speakers and cooperation.

Yet, in the UN’s General Assembly every member country speaks in its own language, appropriately but not without problems. There are numerous positive arguments for global languages, we all know the benefits but English marginalises populations whose first language is not a global language, then it can and does lead to cultural and economic domination of the populations speaking English as a first language.

It would appear attempts like ‘Esperanto’ at this stage of our history are the roads forward. Is EngSpanAraFrenEse feasible (Spanglish exists)? If we all put our heads together to make such a language would it succeed, or be the exclusive language of those in power?

The Enigma Game

Football and sociology go together like two peas in a pod.

Sociology gathers philosophical and cultural evidence and relies on themes and occurrences in a society to explain human behaviour.

How does one describe human behaviours when only a billion or two watch 22 people on a field of grass running round in various circles while trying to chase a globular object? Every four years the globe is caught by football fever and the young dream of playing on this international world stage to incredible receptions of passion, excitement, and unbelievable disbelief.

It's an enigma

Yet, why is it so endemic, what makes it so universal? Why do people become utterly absorbed by it to the extent where we see an out-pouring of national pride where in other circumstances we would not see? In South-Korea the scenes of millions on the streets of Seoul were unforgettable. Apart from the most obvious reasons like drama and excitement, it is a sociological enigma. One cannot deny the cross-cultural popularity of it, the healing power of it and the way in which it absorbs itself into the centre of any culture and produces talented players who go on to become superstars and ambassadors for their countries.

This sport can serve as a doorway of escape from poverty or crime for a talented youngster with a well developed left- or right foot.This social phenomenon is replicated in almost every other sport too. It might have been a comedy but 2002’s Bend It Like Beckham, the story of a young British Hindu who faces the anger of her Asian community for playing football had real positive messages and demonstrated several social comments about its place in the world and society‘s attitude to football. Panahi’s Offside presented us with questions about personal identity about a story of a woman who disguises herself as a man at a footy stadium in Tehran, which is now in fact, unnecessary.

To the 32 countries from every continent participating in this festival there is immense pride and prestige, and the impact of international recognition in what can be an advertising masterstroke.

This it seems could be the tonic, a tonic that allows many to forget the routine of daily life in a ritual of spectatorship that acts as a conduit or a spiritual magnet for communities to come together.

It doesn’t matter if you hate football, it’s the immense social phenomena of seeing disparate persons from Tobago, Slovenia and Korea sharing a point of communication that all understand, that is fascinating to see.

What do we do about all these ‘Bleeps’?

I awake to a bleep on the radio then switch on my mobile phone that bleeps with the day’s first sms. I’m compelled to check emails.

I can only enter my office, after being electronically identified by some disembodied voice behind the intercom.

A animal herder in the Gobi desert checks the weekend’s European football results on his satellite T.V. and radios friends to compare results. Apparently, in the Taklimaken plains, more people have DVD players than running water, and in the Atacama desert, where it rains every 300 years, electronic devices check the weather then precipitate water from Pacific fog banks. A dialysis machine saves the life of a child in Peshawar. International networks of terrorists, and governments, separated by thousands of miles, are able to remain in contact by cellular and fibre-optic waves. An angry teenager in Colorado creates a forum website to discuss problems about the world, then shoots a number of people with a rifle.

Do we fully understand the profound impact that technology has on societies? Technology can be a blessing in disguise for some people but it can be a disruptive social disease for others. It can create healthy and prosperous countries but bring down the most secure. 

The problems facing us today are how to measure the mixed results of this proliferation of modern forms of technology and communication, and how to understand them. This also includes the impact of modern engineering on the natural environment. And furthermore, who is in control, who is involved in the key decision-making process? UNESCO’s commitments are more crucial than ever, as are those of other NGO‘s. And governments.

The word ‘Technology’ is derived from the Greek word technologia (τεχνολογια), which literally means ‘Craft-saying’. The word classifies the knowledge of humanity’s tools and crafts. Technology is not a modern phenomenon. It is an ancient cultural activity predating science and engineering that arrived with some of man’s earliest thoughts, like the wearing of clothing, to contemporarily culminating in the carbon based micro-chip. Its ancient status means that we cannot stop it or contain it, it will always be here, it is our heritage to create it. 

However, what is important is how to live with it and most of all, how to learn to use it responsibly with morality, compassion, and consideration. Without those, we are truly lost.

Zadie Smith and Megaphones

Zadie Smith is one of the most original writers to emerge from Britain the last few years and has breathed life into the post-modernist genre which, during the 1990’s, was becoming predictable and somehow contradictory to its own self-imposed fragmentary nature.

Her novel On Beauty has already been praised for its vitality and won a number of literary awards.

It is a reworking of E.M. Forster’s Edwardian novel ‘Howard’s End‘, in which two sisters struggle against social stratification and its snobbery. But along came a classification termed ‘hysterical realism’, which was applied to Smith’s first novel White Teeth. This realism is characterised by fast paced action, chronic length,

Walter Mitty

and constant digressions on secondary subjects less important to the story; manic characters too, with completely undeniable character traits to the point of them being inauthentic and in White Teeth it is at one and the same possible and impossible to relate to the main characters, just as it is impossible to believe in Harry Potter.

Oddly, Smith’s contemporary JK Rowling is guilty of creating a world of semi-realism where characters inhabit the known world when not in the School of Magic, and her later books are of chronic length and full of digressions secondary to the plot. If Smith’s writings fall into ‘hysterical realism’ then Rowling’s are juxtaposed as ‘hysterical fantasism’, a writer attempting to recreate the barriers between reality and fantasy which were destroyed by the post-modernists and Beckett. Even though of course Zadie Smith and Rowling’s writings are incomparable in genre they are both women who have experienced high levels of literary success, and British literature has a long tradition of women writers that spans back to Elizabethan times. Zadie Smith is but the contemporary result of centuries of practice and experimentation, though not without influence; needless to say Greek, Roman, and Arab. But today many British women writers are feeling the influence of former parts of the British Empire from the Indian sub-continent to the Caribbean like Monica Ali who wrote of life in a London Bangladeshi community.

This is a phenomenon relatively new to British women, once the preserve of male British writers like Rushdie and V.S. Naipaul. Zadie Smith herself is descended from the Caribbean. Yet this custom of the ‘colonial literature’ unearthing expression through the language of the coloniser is as stark today as it was when the Nigerian Chinua Achebe was first writing his narratives nearly 40 years ago on the troubles and accomplishments of integration, but of course, not always acknowledged. There are still many different sets of teeth that have no voice and require a megaphone.

A Beautiful Legacy

I saw some clay pots symmetrically arranged in a orderly row, little vehicles to carry honey, wine, or for transporting water on a hot summer’s day.

I imagined a pair of hands carefully arranging them, neatly packing the smooth carefully worked brownish pots together for the great journey ahead. Other hands laboured nervously, tirelessly organizing things correctly.

All the arrangements had to be appropriate and without error as sustenance and water would be required to survive the long journey for the traveler  and pictures and words necessary to prevent loneliness in those dark moments of self-doubt. The journey to the netherworld is fraught with challenges and tests and one must be prepared adequately to meet those tests.

The traveler would have time to reflect

on found wisdom, missed opportunities and fulfilled aspirations and all knowledge and experience gathered in a typical life because 3500 years would pass before this tomb would be opened in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings. Those clay pots still lay there, somewhat skewered to one side under the shifting movement of the earth, their brownish hue now a dull grey.

We have found more secrets and knowledge of an age long gone and seemingly remote, but we can ask more questions of how this ancient nature was placed and behaved in the universe different from our own. This was a discovery that compelled us to look inside ourselves and question for that brief moment on what we know about human nature and what that ancient traveler knew in his/her wisdom. Despite our age of computers and passive consumerism we share something definite with this traveler, a traveler who perhaps loved, and love and death are inescapably intertwined both breeding wisdom and loss. There is no need to be afraid to love even if there is the risk of loss for the roads of love and loveless both lead to the same destination.

Love breeds compassion and dissolves ignorance, but living in these times occasionally feels like living in a vacuum needing justice and compassion. But seeing that tomb also reminds us that our existence is brief, which should spurn us on to make use of the time we have to fill that void with love and understanding.

This new discovery is our legacy and hopefully in 3500 years from now future generations will discover OUR tombs and we will be their beautiful legacy.