I would like to visit Scotland and the Orkney Islands. I know trainline and scotsrail website, but couldn't really find a single list of trains to and from a station in Scotland / UK. Is there any, can someone provide me a link/address?
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1I don't really understand why you think this information will be useful to you. You're at A, you want to go to B, so why isn't it more useful to just ask National Rail (or any of the other websites) how to get from A to B by train?– David RicherbyCommented Feb 14, 2018 at 18:14
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I'm at A, but I don't want to go B directly. I would like to check the different options from A then decide which to choose. Sometimes combining rail and flights also an option so I need to calculate with airports also.– McloadCommented Feb 14, 2018 at 18:40
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OK, but it still seems easier to ask for trains from A to B and look at where those trains stop. And if you're considering flying, then B becomes the airport.– David RicherbyCommented Feb 14, 2018 at 18:52
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Probably you did not travel (by train) that much than me, for planning longer/expensive journeys, it is really important that you know all of your possibilities.– McloadCommented Feb 15, 2018 at 9:43
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1Right, so we have an X-Y problem. There are, I believe, websites that will advise you on breaking journeys to get cheaper tickets, and you should ask about those. Also, most tickets except Advance tickets let you travel on any train on the given day and, you can get off the train anywhere that it stops. So even if you had a Manchester--Thurso ticket, you could get off at Inverness. (As you've seen, you'd have to change trains there anyway, but that doesn't matter.)– David RicherbyCommented Feb 15, 2018 at 10:37
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10 Answers
You can look at the departures or arrivals for any station on the UK rail network on the National Rail website.
For example Glasgow Central Departures and Glasgow Central Arrivals. You can choose to add a second station to the search if you want to see only arrivals at a given station from a certain station.
If you want a more manual option there are also links on the same website to the Electronic National Rail Timetable (hosted on the Network Rail website). This gives you the long term schedual for every station, similar to what you would find printed out on the platform. Similar timetables are provided by the operators of the stations or networks that server the stations.
Continuing the example, Glasgow Central is on timetable 225 and 226.
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1Wow, wow, wow. Thank you so much. This is the best possible resource. I can have it online, copy to my dropbox and can check any station and route when I just want. I used to use such timetables even in print format back in the old days.– McloadCommented Feb 14, 2018 at 10:11
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Does that one stop at Carfin? I dodn't even know that Holytown had a station!– MawgCommented Feb 14, 2018 at 12:33
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The National Rail information is also available via their Android and Apple apps. Commented Mar 14, 2023 at 23:17
You can use ÖBB's site also for stations outside of Austria to see departures and arrivals. Just enter the station you are interested in and click on Display Information, then on Departures (or Arrivals) and under Settings you can change the date (and some other things, such as type of train).
As always there is the caveat that HAFAS might not know about some regional trains (the same problem as if you use bahn.de to plan journeys) but this should be better than nothing.
answered Feb 13, 2018 at 12:12
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3This is much better than expected, I'm highly surprised they now the British timetables in the continent.– McloadCommented Feb 13, 2018 at 12:13
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2@Mcload: I'm not tbh - it's probably all come from some public API Commented Feb 13, 2018 at 14:58
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4@Mcload It used to be the case that the best way to find your way round British railways was bahn.de - I don't think they are as good now though. Commented Feb 14, 2018 at 13:15
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While not an official source the Wikipedia page for most train stations in the UK has a section labeled services, which give an overview of the trains from a station. Example for Kyle of Lochalsh:
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_of_Lochalsh_railway_station)
Always be sure to check against an official source before traveling. If your having trouble finding the nearest station you could consider using one of these maps of the network: http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations_destinations/maps.aspx
https://www.openrailwaymap.org/
Also, if you know the date you'll be traveling real time trains is capable of showing all departures from a station on a given day, example for Kyle of Lochalsh: http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/advanced/KYL/2018/02/13/0000-2359?stp=WVS&show=pax-calls&order=wtt
You could also consider posting a more specific question with the island you are actually trying to reach.
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The last one is a good point. If I check the ferry timetables, it will list all destination from a port. A similar I was looking for in trains. Wikipedia is a good source, I would never imagined someone upload such information there, but that can be quickly outdated compared to a site which uses railway company databases. Also RealtimeTrains is looks like similar what OBB offers so I will use their site.– McloadCommented Feb 13, 2018 at 13:51
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5Please don't use images of text -- it makes answers inaccessible to search engines and people who use screen readers. I realise that the table formatting can't be done in markdown, so that would be OK as an image. But copy-pasting the textual part of the Wikipedia page would have been more useful for readers and easier for you! Commented Feb 13, 2018 at 14:12
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1You'll be interested in Thurso rather than Kyle of Lochalsh, if you're heading to Orkney. Then It's 2 miles from the station to the ferry at Scrabster. (Obligatory Kyle line joke . "Does this train stop at Kyle of Lochalsh?" "Well, if it doesn't, there'll be a very big splash".) Commented Feb 13, 2018 at 22:24
If you're happy to search for trains for a single day at a time, you can use http://www.brtimes.com/. Enter the departure station, leave "only trains calling at" blank, and select a date, and it will show you all trains timetabled to depart from that station.
The site says:
Information is updated nightly from data feeds provided by Network Rail, except for details of station connection times, train schedules for Ireland (North & South) and some bus and ferry schedules, which are updated weekly from data feeds provided by ATOC.
so it should be reliable.
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Wow .. how did I not know about brtimes.com? Always find NationalRail a bit annoying that it'll force a mandatory change time at big stations which isn't always strictly speaking necessary (e.g. when it doesnt' show an 8 minute change at Birmingham New Street for a train that comes in on the same platform). That seems a good compromise between that and the printed timetable. Commented Feb 14, 2018 at 13:52
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On my travels across Europe I always use the Rail Planner app.
It is mainly for use with Interrail tickets, but two features are really useful for "normal" train travels as well:
- Find train stations near your current position.
- Look up departure and arrival information for every station.
The best part of the app is that it's almost entirely offline (data needed for Google Maps integration), and with regular updates for any changes.
National rail will list routes from A to B for all trains in the UK
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1You can do the same on trainline or on other sites. I need a list of trains by stations.– McloadCommented Feb 13, 2018 at 11:56
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1@Mcload Is this more what you mean? (from Real Time Trains) realtimetrains.co.uk/search/advanced/THS/2018/02/13/…– skifansCommented Feb 13, 2018 at 13:18
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5Is it only me that doesn't understand what you're asking and why this answer doesn't fulfil it? Could you please be more specific as to what you mean by 'list of trains by stations'? National Rail does that. Why is this not adequate?– Tom WCommented Feb 13, 2018 at 13:19
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1@Mcload what do you mean? direct trains from a station? as you can go anywhere in the UK from a train station with connections Commented Feb 13, 2018 at 14:38
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2@meta The way I understood the question (together with the second comment to this answer) is that it asks for a list of trains from/to a given station on a given date. Something I didn't see on the National Rail page. Commented Feb 13, 2018 at 19:27
For the specific example you quote in a comment (Thurso) since this is basically a single line service the downloadable timetable for the line available from the rail operator's site
is useful. Obviously this does not work well for stations which serve many destinations like Birmingham New Street. For that the Austrian site mention by @martin in his answer is much better.
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Yeah, for one station is good, but then I need to see connections in other cities, so I don't need this for only that one station and I will use it later obviously for other routes. Also I didn't liked the design and informations of that pdf when I found it yesterday, so I decided to ask the question here.– McloadCommented Feb 13, 2018 at 13:53
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1You don't need to see the connections to other cities because the numerous timetabling websites will do all that work for you. If you want to get from A to B, just ask the websites how to get from A to B. You don't need to find out every C that you can get to from A and then manually cross-reference which of those will allow you to take a train to B. Commented Feb 15, 2018 at 9:55
Google maps typically shows a "departure board" for each rail station.
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2See OP's comment on Sam Jones' answer. He's also interested in future dates and not just a live departure board. Commented Feb 13, 2018 at 19:32
I suggest Rome2Rio which'll list trains and connections, but also give you options for flights, ferries, buses and taxis depending what is appropriate for the route you are travelling. I can't guarantee the cost accuracy, but it is a good first tool to look at.
Example Dingwall to Inverness https://www.rome2rio.com/s/Dingwall/Inverness
Example Thurso to Fair Isle https://www.rome2rio.com/s/Thurso/Fair-Isle
Clicking on the train option for example will give you schedule information and links to scotrail, while the bus option links to the different schedule websites. Once you find which bus and train companies serve the town, you can then use those links to see all routes out from a given town. So for Dingwall for example, you can click on the scotrail link for trains and Stagecoach, D&E Coaches and Westerbus links for buses so you can see all their routes.
To get more trains to or from a station, click on "Explore" in the top right corner. There you will get additional connections from your "to" and "from" locations. For example for Thurso there are the local Scottish towns, but also ones such as Thurso to Penzance (Cornwall) and even Gdansk!
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Yet another answer that suggests how to check the trans between two stations, while OP asks for trains from one station to any other station.– pipeCommented Feb 14, 2018 at 9:47
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How do you know I would like to travel the way along from Thurso to Penzance? :)– McloadCommented Feb 14, 2018 at 10:23
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@pipe - I've edited to expand on using the links for a given town to find all of the transportation operators to allow you to find their other destinations.– DragonelCommented Feb 14, 2018 at 22:00
If I understand your question and comments correctly, you want to customize your journey on the basis of stopping off at places of interest along the way.
I think the easiest way to do this would be by looking at the UK rail map. There are a lot of lines, but not so many it's hard to follow. This map has all stations and is laid out as a technical rather than geographic diagram so is easy to read.
If you look at Thurso and your intention is to go south through Scotland, you can easily see that you can change at Inverness and go via the east coast line or the inland line.
However it depends what you want to optimize by. If you want to optimize for interesting places, then the map is all you need. If you want to optimize for cost you're better using a specialist engine like TrainSplit.
