RAIL fares expert Barry Doe explains the situation regarding through tickets to Ireland.
MOST readers will be aware that it is possible to buy a ticket from any station in Britain to any station in Ireland, via various routes.
For Northern Ireland, travel is via Cairnryan (a small port six miles from Stranraer) and Belfast Port. Whereas at one time travellers from London took the Sleeper direct to Stranraer (from where the ferry then left), it is now necessary to go to Glasgow Central for a local train to Ayr, and then a connecting bus for the 44-mile journey to Cairnryan.
Of course, it’s better to use the train to Stranraer and then make your way to Cairnryan. But all-in-all, most people find it better to fly all the way, owing to the messy and lengthy journey by rail, bus, ferry and final bus into Belfast.
Nevertheless, through fares exist, and most large stations will sell them on demand. Indeed, tickets from any Scottish station may also be bought to any station in the Republic of Ireland via this axis.
Bookings also exist via Holyhead and Liverpool. All these are certainly cheap - around £60 single will take you from Penzance to Belfast via London and Cairnryan, a journey for which the leg from Penzance to Stranraer alone costs over £230.
To prevent people using the Irish fares to undercut GB-only fares, break of journey is not permitted. And although they’re available on demand, no ticket can be sold without a ship reservation.
For the Republic of Ireland, other than from Scotland (as above), travel is via Holyhead and a variety of shipping lines to Dublin. Tickets are also still available from any station in Britain to Rosslare via Fishguard Harbour, but not beyond Rosslare.
While it’s possible to buy singles in Britain for journeys to or from Northern Ireland, it is not possible to buy singles here for journeys
from the Republic to Britain.
Now, this doesn’t matter much as you can get returns. But if you did want a single from the Republic, I gather there is no problem buying tickets to any British station from Irish staffed stations. The real difficulty, however, comes for travel to Britain commencing in Northern Ireland.
That’s extraordinary, seeing as it’s merely a journey between two parts of the UK. On paper, it seems the ability is meant to exist to buy from (say) Coleraine to Uckfield, just as happens in the reverse, but I was told some time ago that in practice no station in Northern
Ireland sells tickets to Britain any longer.
I checked with the Rail Delivery Group, to ask if it could find out if there are any National Rail-appointed agents in Northern Ireland. RDG didn’t know of any, so contacted Translink, which is the umbrella organisation that runs Northern Ireland Railways.
Surprisingly, Translink replied: “Yes passengers can book ‘rail and sail’ products in our office, which is in The Europa Bus Station, 10 Glengall Street, Belfast BT12 5AH.”
So, if you do live in Coleraine, 68 miles from Belfast, that’s a long way to go to buy a ticket!
Sadly, my experience of Translink is that it’s an inefficient road-biased organisation, so I wasn’t surprised to hear that someone who went into the Europa Bus Station a few weeks back and tried to buy a rail ticket to Britain was told that National Rail tickets could no longer be bought over the counter from Translink, and instead had to be ordered online.
It seems Translink is doing all it can to suppress demand and kill off classic rail journeys to the rest of the UK.