Gates Travel - Rail Ticket Specialist

UK Rail Travel

At its best, travelling by train can be a pleasant, civilised and relaxing experience.

We believe that planning your journey and buying tickets should be just as pleasant and civilised, but we know that buying tickets online can often be time-consuming and confusing.

Let Gates Travel take the strain out of booking rail tickets.

Why book with Gates Travel?

Because we can save you time and money.

Despite initiatives to simplify fares and make buying tickets easier, rail fares in the UK are still amazingly complex. Actually, that's often a good thing because it means there are lots of opportunities to save money, especially if you're making a journey that involves a few changes of train. Ticketing can be a minefield though and there's no substitute for professional advice.

Sadly, the friendly booking office clerk at your local station who used to sell you the right ticket for your journey is likely to have been replaced by a self-service machine these days. That's where Gates Travel can help. We've been issuing rail tickets since 1933, so we think it's fair to say that we're experts. Our inside knowledge and thorough understanding of fare rules, easements, permitted routes, break of journey allowances etc. often enables us to legitimately ticket journeys at considerably lower fares than can be found online.

When fares are displayed online, you only see the single or return fares for the specific station-to-station journey on the specific trains you've selected. Yet for a great many journeys this is not the cheapest or best way to issue the tickets. Even selecting 'Peak' or 'Off-Peak' ticket types can be tricky. There's no simple definition of what constitutes 'Off-Peak' because it varies for different journeys. Time restrictions may apply only during the morning or may also apply during the afternoon. A train may be an 'Off-Peak' service when it leaves one station, but become a 'Peak' service at the next station along the line, meaning potential savings of hundreds of pounds for those in the know.

Purchasing your rail ticket from Gates Travel will probably save you time and we'll do our best to save you money. But no matter what, we'll provide real value for money and real customer service, before and after you travel. That's something you won't get by booking online or buying your ticket from a machine.

Station ticket machines do have one advantage though. If you're not able to call into our offices and you need a ticket in a hurry, you can collect your Gates Travel rail ticket from any one of over 1,300 UK stations that provide a Ticket on Departure collection facility, either from the ticket vending machine or from the station booking office.