Thread: Sail & Rail
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Unread 09-01-2015, 20:51   #215
Traincustomer
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Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: ar an traein
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1. I know what you mean but never really thought about it. From time to time I have seen notices on the ATW website along the lines of Advance tickets until xx (date) now on sale. (The current note on the website is “Advance tickets now available up until 3 April 2015”).

These notices seem to appear every now and again. I have reviewed e-mails updates I receive but can’t determine the pattern – sometimes it seems there’s a month between them – other times a week or just days. Possibly the best way to get a definitive answer is an e-mail to ATW’s Customer Services or, if possible, a message on Twitter.

2. Booking the ticket online is enough to have the reservation. When the tickets are collected the machine prints off a number of coupons one of which is the mandatory reservation coupon for the ferry which will specify Fishguard to Rosslare and the sailing date & time of the ferry.

3. That’s it. When I travelled this route towards the end of last year on an advance single and collected my tickets from the machine it generated three “coupons”: (i) a seat reservation for the train as far as Swansea; (ii)the reservation coupon for the ferry described above; (iii) the ticket per se specifying the name of the starting station and the destination (i.e. Rosslare Hr) route Fishguard Stena.

Show the Cardiff – Rosslare Hr ticket and ferry reservation coupon to check-in personnel at Fishguard. Usually they take the ticket per se and issue the ferry boarding card in its place.

The ticket & reservation coupons are printed on standard rail ticket stock.

A difference in Wales/England/Scotland is that when collecting tickets the card used to purchase the tickets must be inserted into the ticket machine. Personally I don’t like this and prefer Iarnród Éireann’s ticket collection procedure.

That's my understanding of it all anyway.
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