Review: Trainline Tickets
Score:
72%
Coming from the Trainline website - which acts as a central ticket agent for all the UK train companies - this utility application is aimed at the frequent traveller, allowing you to check train times and fares from the handset, and then buy your tickets from your phone without having to worry about call centres, complicated websites, or a very long queue to the one ticket sales counter open in the station.
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Of course it's unlikely you'll have a suitable printer attached to your phone, so your tickets can be either picked up at the station with the collection reference before you get on the train, or some services will allow you to travel with an "mTicket" that is shown on your screen - including a 2D barcode for scanning purposes. An icon beside the ticket will let you know what type of ticket is on offer - to be honest, this will more than likely be "pick up ticket at the station". I think that either method is still more efficient than the alternatives.
Also note that not every ticket type is displayed - many of the rail companies will keep "special discount" tickets on their own websites. What's on offer via Trainline are the regular inventory tickets, so there may be some circumstances where your key factor is price, not convenience, in which case you'll need to do some searching around online yourself.
To be fair, when I travel to London (the likely place for me to find a cheap deal), I prefer to spend a little more to give me some flexibility, rather than be locked into one specific train with a non-refundable ticket, but your own mileage may vary. Trainline offers me the tickets I buy, so I'm quite happy to use this application.
You'll need to enter your credit or debit card details, which are stored on a central server, minus the CCV number by the signature strip. If your phone goes missing, people aren't going to use it for a quick getaway to Bristol, but when buying subsequent tickets you don't need to do a full re-entry of your card details. This seems a nice compromise between security and utility.
I like that the majority of the interface is made of of sliding lists and swipes of the finger. Partly because it stopped it feeling like the dialog button on a web site, but also because that's what works on the modern mobile device which is all screen and few keys. It is a bit unsettling to have a keyboard other than the Nokia one pop up to enter text or a regular number pad for requesting departure or arrival times, but I can understand why developers Masabí have gone down this route for an application that reaches across multiple mobile OS platforms.
Your recent searches are stored as well, so it's a simple matter to call up my last Edinburgh-Glasgow trip to get times and trains for my next trip.
The Trainline is a good mobile application. It doesn't just replicate a website's look while providing the same function, it works within the different parameters that mobile gives the user and developer. Because of that simple focus on checking the trains and then booking tickets, I'm half tempted to use this app to buy tickets for my travels, even when I'm at home and next to a desk-bound computer. The rest of the time it's just sitting in the corner of my phone, quietly waiting. Because it will be needed.
-- Ewan Spenc, June 2011.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at