Getting money back for delayed or cancelled trains

The majority of train companies use a system called Delay Repay. If yours does, then as long as your train is more than 30 minutes late, you’ll always be able to get some money back.

To make things a little more complicated though, train companies have different guidelines for how late a train needs to be before they’ll offer you compensation. And if they don’t use the Delay Repay system, your train might need to be later than 30 minutes to qualify for compensation.

On the flip side, some will offer compensation for delays of less than 30 minutes.

We’ve put together a chart at the bottom of this article for you to check yours.

Let’s face it, sometimes you don’t know exactly what time your train is meant to leave the platform, let alone what time it pulls into the station. Plus, if you’re late, or in a hurry, or just want to get to where you’re going – it’s easy to lose track.

And that’s where these websites come in. They log the departure and arrival times for trains up and down the country, so you can check exactly how long your delay was going back weeks and even months.

Recent Train Times

Realtime Trains

Raildar (you’ll need to create an account to use this website)

This varies from company to company as well, but typically if your train was 30 minutes late, you’ll get 50% of the cost of a single ticket, or 50% of the cost of the relevant part of a return ticket.

If you’re unlucky enough to have a 60 minute delay, you’ll get 100% of the price of a single ticket.

For return tickets, there are a few more rules. If your delay is between 30-59 minutes, normally compensation is 25% of the full fare, over 60 minutes that goes up to 50%, and if the delay is 120 minutes or more you could get 100% of the return ticket fare back.

Season tickets – so tickets for travel over a month or longer - are different again. Most will let you claim for delays on a particular journey, but not all. You’ll need to check what is offered on your ticket and how much you can get.

Don’t forget, you can now get your compensation in many forms, not just railway vouchers. So that means you can get bank transfer, cheques and refunds to your card.

Normally it’s just a case of going to your train company’s website and filling out a form with your journey details. The list below has all the train companies and the links to their compensation pages

Always take pictures of your tickets – you’ll need to send them off with your claim.

You’ve only got 28 days to make your claim, so act fast to make sure you’re not losing out.

If your train was delayed or cancelled and you then don’t travel, you can get a full and immediate refund. You can do this at the station, or go to the train company’s website. If you have a season ticket you normally can’t get refund if you didn’t travel.

Below is a list of UK train operators and the minimum time you need to be delayed by before you're eligible for a partial refund. Check the links for full terms and conditions. 

• Anglia Abellio Greater Anglia 15 minutes
• Avanti West Coast (formerly Virgin Trains) 15 minutes
• c2c 15 minutes (2 minutes if you are a Smartcard holder and have Automatic Delay Repay)
• Chiltern Railways 30 minutes
• Cross Country: 30 minutes
• East Midlands Trains (Opens in a new window) 15 minutes
• Grand Central (Opens in a new window) 60 minutes
• Great Northern (Opens in a new window) (formerly First Capital Connect) 15 minutes
• Great Western Railway (formerly First Great Western services) 15 minutes
• Hull Trains (Opens in a new window) 30 minutes
• LNER  (Opens in a new window) (formerly Virgin Trains East Coast) 30 minutes
• London Northwestern Railway 15 minutes
• London Overground 30 minutes (need to create an Oyster account first)
• London Underground & DLR (Opens in a new window) 15 minutes (need to create an Oyster account first)
• Merseyrail 30 minutes
• Northern 15 minutes
• ScotRail 30 minutes
• Southeastern (Opens in a new window) 15 minutes
• South Western Railway 15 minutes
• Southern 15 minutes
• TfL Rail 30 minutes (need to create an Oyster account first)
• Thameslink  (formerly First Capital Connect) 15 minutes
• Transpennine Express 15 minutes
• Transport for Wales Rail (Opens in a new window) 15 minutes
• Translink 30 minutes