Online Seat Reservations

For all Advance purchase fares booked on our website our system will automatically reserve a seat free of charge. For Anytime fares the site will ask whether you want a seat reserved. This is in case you have not made a decision on when you want to travel or would prefer not to be tied down to a particular train.

We are not always able to reserve seats. This could be because:

• The train services you are traveling on do not offer seat reservations. e.g. if it is a short journey.
• The train on which you wish to travel is full at the time of booking.
• The train company may not have released seat reservations yet. This is done up to 6 months ahead of travel.

Even without a seat reservation your tickets are still valid and you can sit in any vacant unreserved seat for the appropriate class of travel for your journey.

Please note that, unless a seat is booked on a train, we cannot guarantee that you will be seated for the duration of your journey. We will usually notify customers of upcoming services where this is likely to be possible via our social media pages.

Reserving a Seat After Making a Booking

Some service providers allow a seat reservation to be requested up to 2 hours before travel. At Grand Central we recommend at least 24 hours' notice - seats can be booked by calling our customer support team on 0345 603 4852. Alternatively you can visit your local station and arrange a reservation. This is subject to the Terms and Conditions of the ticket and availability is not guaranteed.