Understanding Rail Strikes, Minimising Disruptions, and Managing Refunds: Your Complete Guide

Written by Tony Leeming

So you may have heard on the news that there are some more rail strikes coming soon, and you may be wondering if your journey is going to be affected.

Firstly, the simplest option is this: if your train is canceled due to the strike and you decide not to travel, then you can obtain a full refund. Here's our step-by-step guide on efficiently navigating the self refund form, making it easy for you to effortlessly refund your tickets.

But what do you do if you still want to travel? In that case, there is usually ticket acceptance in place for around the strike dates. You can usually use your ticket the day before or up to 2 days after, this is usually confirmed by the train companies around a week before the strike date. Rest assured, we'll keep our strike page constantly updated as soon as we get the scoop on ticket acceptance. You'll be in the know as soon as we are!

If you do want to travel on strike day then there is usually a very limited number of trains running so we recommend that you check your journey prior to travel. One of the easiest ways to do this is on the National Rail Enquiries website or our mobile app. If your traveling on an Advance type ticket and your booked train is canceled, you can use your ticket on the next available train with that operator, so for example if it was an LNER train, it may not be valid with Lumo. There could be ticket acceptance in place, however please do check with either station staff or the train operator prior to boarding as you may not have a valid ticket to travel. 

If you did decide to travel on a strike day, train services usually start a little later and finish earlier during the day and can start later the following day. These trains can also be busier as people may have decided to travel on other days,

Seating reservations may have also been canceled on these services.

OK, so I have decided to just get a refund instead and it is not yet the strike date.

No problem, if you have booked on Trainsplit.com and your booking is made up of E-tickets just head to https://refunds.trainsplit.com/, pop in a few details, select that you are not traveling due to the strike action and we will automatic refund process will issue a refund into your account in a few days. 

If you have printed your tickets, just upload a photo of your tickets both intact and cut up and we will process your refund for you. If you have paper tickets, remember you don’t need to print these to get a refund. 

I want to ask some questions about my options, that’s not a problem. We do have lots of information on our strike page, https://trainsplit.com/rail-strikes or you can email our friendly customer service team at customer.support@trainsplit.com. We're lovely!