Booking train ticket with First Great Western
 

I need to book a rail ticket between Bath and London in late September. First Great Western's website will not take bookings from overseas - although the site looks like it does, everything is rejected at the payment stage. As I am arriving in London at the start of September, is it possible to go to a station and buy a ticket in advance for later in the month,or is my only option buying a full price ticket in Bath on the day of travel? If it is possible, at which stations could I do this? Thanks.

Try NXEC - http://www.nationalexpresseastcoast.com/

As for collecting tickets - http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/statio...ils.html#Fares

FGW does sometimes have web fares not available elsewhere. If the fares you're getting on National Express don't match, email the "contact" reference on the FGW site and see if they've got a solution.

It would help other posters here if you published FGW's reply: if they really don't have a workround, I'll send the problem to our local FGW customer panel (which include businesses who will be losing customers if the FGW site is making life difficult for overseas tourists) for them to include in their list of things they want to beat up Worst Great Western about.

You can always buy advance tickets at a station: the slight drawback is that, by leaving the booking for a month, the very cheap tix you want might have gone and you might have to buy at the next price up.

Thanks for your replies. Flanner, I emailed FGW when I had problems booking from Australia. They said they were working on an international online booking system and that it "might" be operational by the time I needed it! No other solution was offered. I wasn't willing to wait any longer on the off chance that it came online before September, so I have followed Alan's advice and booked through National Express who were offering the fares at the same price. Thank you both for your help.

I was just about to post a message about our successful ticket purchase for a trenhotel (sleeper train) in spain. We used BETS (Budget Europe Travel Service) for our travel in june . They got us our actual tickets, which we couldn't do online, and had almost given up on. They may be able to get you the tickets at a reasonable price. (will post more details separately.)
kawh