The United Kingdom's railway network is the oldest in the world, having existed since 1830. Unfortunately, the network has suffered from lack of planning and near constant meddling by politicians for much of its 180-year existence, and as a result, the system is full of irritating quirks and idiosyncracies - something which is apparent after the traveller has experienced the efficiency of rail travel across the rest of Europe.

The UK's rail system point-to-point tickets, regional passes and season tickets are your main options when travelling by rail. Britrail and Inter-Rail passes are also valid on the UK rail network, but these must be purchased before arrival in the UK. Britrail and Inter-Rail passes also need to be validated (stamped) at a station Travel Centre before you can use them.

If you're wanting to get all your travel arrangements sorted before you arrive, the best websites for point-to-point tickets are National Rail, East Coast or TheTrainline.com (note: a surcharge may be added for booking by credit card on these sites, though debit cards (Cirrus/Maestro/VISA) usually incur no charge. The Trainline normally adds a booking fee of £1.50 per transaction so it makes sense to use other sites, such as First Great Western or SouthWest Trains. These sites are rebadged versions of trainline but without the booking fee.) If you visit these sites around 4-6 weeks before you're intending to travel, you can find extreme savings compared to on-the-day purchase (e.g. London-Manchester would cost £61.40 on the day, but can be purchased at £12.50 in advance online if you are flexible about date and time of travel). These lower fares are non-refundable and can, in principle, be changed for a fee of £10 although this requires negotiation with staff in offshore call centres and is not always straightforward.

All tickets booked in advance on medium and long distance services will come with a free seat reservation. Where reservation tags have been placed, this gives you the right to sit in that seat for the duration of your journey. On the newest trains, seat reservations are displayed electronically above the seat. If no seat reservation tags have been issued on the train, the seat reservation is not valid and you should sit wherever a seat is available.National Rail is a Web portal for the entire network which has maps, timetable query pages, lists of special offers, regional and county passes and links to the websites of all the individual train operating companies (TOCs). Some special offers can only be booked online from the website of the relevant TOC.

There are three basic types of ticket - known as ADVANCE, OFF PEAK and ANYTIME. These are summarised below. Peak hours are usually regarded as 7:00-9:30(am) and 16:00-18:00 (4:00-6:00pm).