Lin

I've tried several of the websites mentioned on this forum but none of them will allow city-to-city train tickets to be mailed overseas. Is there any way to buy a single journey and receive the tickets before I travel? I want to take the train from London Paddington to Penzance on the same day my flight arrives in London. Advance fares are much cheaper! Please advise.

alanRow

If you use the fasticket option you can pick the ticket up at Paddington - so you can get a ticket from £15 (£30) one way.

If you use a company like raileurope then you'll probably pay over $150 for the same trip

GeoffHamer

If you're not familiar with the system, these are machines which will print your tickets when you insert the credit/debit card you used to buy the tickets. You normally need to enter a password which will be sent to you by e-mail when you buy the tickets. If you have time to spare and want to spend a few hours in London, there is a left luggage office at Paddington station.

Moonriver

The problem I have found with booking tickets online is that they require a "post code" they will not recognize a US "zip code" even though they have US in the country list drop down. Any suggestions? Thank you.

noe847

I have used my own billing address and the post code for my hotel. This has worked for me several times. The exact details are a bit foggy (the last time I did it was a year ago), but I think I've entered the post code first and then changed the address/city to my billing address.

Travelanytime

I just returned rfom a trip to Europe. I did try to purchase ticket online from the US for the train from Amsterdam to Frankfurt without success. I called the train customer service in Holland and they told me that they cannot accept "foreign" issued credit card online (meaning outside of Europe) and they will not mail overseas. Yes, the fare was a lot cheaper. The other train compnay I know of that will take US credit card would be the EuroRail. But they would be a lot more expensive. I ended up buying the ticket the minute I arrived at the Amsterdam Airport. The price was twice as much.

alanRow

People have reported success using http://www.nationalexpresseastcoast.com/ to book tickets on UK trains. They have mentioned that not all US CC's are acceptable

di2315

Hi Lin

I've had exactly the same experience when trying to book Eurostar from London to Paris from home here in Australia.

I remembered from another thread that you need to back out of the train website, then delete cookies from your computer memory (so that when you next log into the train website it doesn't recognise your computer again.)

Then I had to use a UK postcode and address - I happened to be travelling to a private address, so don't know if a hotel would work as well.

The next glitch arose when I tried to pay by Mastercard; I assume the card number had some Aussie ID in it. So next tried Amex card, and that worked OK . . . and who says computers are smarter than humans!!!

Happy travels, Di

di2315

PS forgot to add that I opted to collect the tickets from Paddington Station, so now have a code for doing this once we arrive in UK. Di

ira

Hi L,

How about if you have your tickets mailed to your Penzance hotel and have them mail them to you at home?

noe847

When I purchased mine online, I just collected them at the station. Easy as can be.

Moonriver

Thank you AlanRow!!!!

This actually worked!!!!

"http://www.nationalexpresseastcoast.com"

We are booked.