Rail passengers can now buy their train tickets via their mobile phones using the enhanced mobile version of the South West Trains website. The updated version of the mobile website allows passengers to purchase tickets and receive tailored information on their journeys while on the move. Tickets can be bought quickly and easily through the South West Trains mobile website and then collected from one of a thousand stations across the south of England.

South West Trains has responded to increasing demand from customers by revamping the design, content and functionality of its mobile website to make it even easier for passengers to book their tickets on the move.

The enhanced South West Trains mobile website includes the following benefits:

• Passengers can purchase tickets on their mobile phone while out and about;
• A new GPS location search which locates the nearest station;
• Upcoming journeys are remembered allowing customers to check ticket details on the go;
• New Journey Check layout provides faster and clearer access to train service and journey information;
• Customers are able to register and log in to personalised Journey Check Alerts which allow them to keep up to date with any disruption on their route.

Maggie Banasiak, Marketing Manager for the South West Trains and Network Rail alliance, commented: “The public are increasingly using mobile devices to plan their busy lives and our new look mobile booking engine is packed with a raft of new functions that enhance ticketing and customer information and make it even easier for our passengers to buy tickets while they are on the go.”

Providing real time disruption information and live departure and arrival boards to customers via their mobile phone, the new Journey Check Mobile facility is a mobile phone friendly view of South West Trains’ Journey Check. It provides real time updates on arrivals and departures, route disruption, delays, catering updates and Journey Check Alerts registration.

Using Journey Check Mobile, customers can now select the train service they are interested in and see the calling pattern of that service, the expected time of arrival and the platform number where it is available.

This development comes just weeks after parent company Stagecoach Group announced plans to transform the way consumers use tickets to travel on public transport by partnering with the UK’s biggest communications company, Everything Everywhere. The two companies have unveiled a trial of the UK’s first Government-standard commercial deployment of mobile contactless transport ticketing which is already underway on the Stagecoach bus network in Cambridgeshire and allows a small cross section of bus users to receive, store and validate their bus tickets using their mobile phone.