Before You Travel

Planning Your Travel

• Journey planning and timetables
• Planned disruption & strike action
• Station maps (to help plan access in advance)
   

Journey planning and Timetables: 

• Plan your journey using our planning tool or view our timetables.
• Alternative formats such as audio and large print versions of timetables or our Accessible Travel Policy are available on request. You can do this by calling our Customer Experience Centre by phone or Text Relay, and on our website, free of charge. We aim to provide this to you within seven working days. 

Planned disruption & strike action

• Details of engineering works, disruptions and planned improvement across the Northern network are here – Engineering and Disruptions.
• Keep up to date with any strike or industrial action which may impact your journey.

What to do if your service is disrupted

• Northern is dedicated to providing the best service possible for their passengers, and although the majority of our trains run on time, unfortunately, delays and cancellations do occasionally happen.

Station Maps

You can find out more about all of our stations thanks to our dedicated station pages.

You can also visit many of our stations virtually before you travel thanks to our 3D interactive maps which are on each station page.

Accessible Travel Support

• Book assistance
• Turn up and go
• Accessible travel policy documents
• What support is available and how it works

Book Assistance 

• Our Passenger Assistance team  are on hand to help plan your journey, book assistance or answer any queries you may have.
• Visit our help site for more information
• You can also book travel assistance online or via the passenger assistance app. 

 Turn up and Go 

• Not booked assistance but require it? That's no problem! Please speak to a member of station staff or, at unstaffed stations, approach the conductor who will be happy to assist you when the train arrives.

   

Accessible travel policy documents 

• If relevant, read our customer guide on mobility scooters.
• Information about our Accessible Travel Policy can be found below.
• Making Rail Accessible 2025
• Making Rail Accessible Easy Read
• An Autism Friendly Guide to Travelling by Train 

What support is available and how it works

• Book assistance in advance: Our Passenger Assistance team  are on hand to help plan your journey, book assistance or answer any queries you may have.
• You can also book travel assistance online or via the passenger assistance app.
• You can also book Passenger Assistance thorough an App  and website delivered by Transreport in partnership with National Rail. You can find out more on the Passenger Assistance website. On that webpage you will also find BLS videos about how to download and use the app, as well as user guide videos. 

Tickets, discounts & passes

• Concessionary travel
• Railcards
• Priority passes & Sunflower lanyards

Concessionary travel

• Those who are elderly or disabled, use public and community transport services at a discountedrate.  Visit the National Rail website to see the concessionary options available. 

Railcards

• There are a variety of railcards available, please check out if you qualify for one of them.
• If your disability makes train travel difficult, you may qualify for a Disabled Persons Railcard. With no time restrictions, you and a friend can travel across the country with ⅓ off all rail fares. Costing just £20 a year, you can enjoy trips out as often as you wish. If you, or the person you assist, has a Disabled Persons Railcard you will be able to get 1/3rd off your ticket.
• If you are between the ages of 5 and 15 and receive age related discount and therefore would not personally require the discount the Disabled Persons Rail Card would offer but have a disability that is covered by the railcard, please consider if you have a carer accompanying you it might still be beneficial to apply for the card as they may receive the discount off their ticket. More details on disabled railcards are available
• Add in the Q&A about the disabled personas rail card

Priority passes 

• Northern has created a priority seating card in partnership with Hidden Disabilities, the organization behind the Sunflower Lanyard scheme for customers who have visible and invisible disabilities to enable them to feel confident and empowered when asking other customers who are sitting in the priority seats on our trains to offer them a seat.
• There are priority seats in most of our carriages.
• The card has dual branding to make it easily recognisable as a disability aid and has space for you to personalise it on the back with any specific requirements you may want to make our staff aware of when travelling with us.
• The cards are available free of charge through the Hidden Disability website by using a voucher code that is available from our customer experience team. Please email the team stating your full name and address and you will be sent a code for a free card. We can provide one code per person.

Sunflower lanyard

• We are proud to recognise the Sunflower lanyard. The lanyard allows the wearer to discreetly indicate that they may have a non-visible disability that may mean they need a little extra support when travelling.
• Around one in ten of the UK population have a non-visible condition and surveys suggest that people with disabilities avoid using rail travel due to difficulties they have faced on their previous experiences
• If you require more information on the scheme, please contact our Customer Experience Centre on 0800 200 6060 and they will be happy to help.