A Review of Lumo Train: London to Edinburgh

Back in 2013 when I studied abroad in London, my school had a few organized trips that they offered to students. Some were short, like a day trip by bus to Stonehenge and Bath. But others spanned the entire weekend — like a longer train trip to Edinburgh, Scotland. Having already taken a long 10-day fall break to four countries and trying to be conscious of my college student budget, I reluctantly passed on the Edinburgh trip.

Fast forward to this past spring, when Sarah and Kelan invited us to come visit them in Dublin in August. From the U.S., it was much cheaper to fly in and out of London, a city I love and was excited to share with Matt for the first time. And then I thought… while we’re across the pond, why don’t we visit Scotland too?! Scotland had been on my bucket list ever since the trip I’d missed out on.

I think that’s why I also had my heart set on traveling by train to Scotland, just like my friends had done. So when it was time to plan our trip, I started by looking at train tickets. We ended up going with a Lumo train from London to Edinburgh. Here’s what it was like.

Booking The Tickets

As much as I’ve traveled by train in Europe, I’d actually never really taken the train in the UK. When I wanted to buy tickets, I started by checking the available trains and timetables on RailEurope.com. You enter your departure city/station, destination city/station, and date, and it will show you your options. You should be able to choose between train services on LNER (London North Eastern Railway) or Lumo. For my trip, Lumo was cheaper and faster, which is why I chose it.

If You’re Not in the UK… Read This

You could also book directly with Lumo, but their site may give you some trouble if you’re not in the UK. I recommend hopping on a VPN and connecting to a London-based network. (With this option you could pay directly in GBP rather than USD if you have a credit card that doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees. Which means you could save even more money.)

You’ll also have to create an account with Lumo before you book. And when it’s time to put in your payment method, there’s a section for you to enter your address. In the bottom corner, you’ll see it says “enter international address.”

Don’t do this! If you do, you won’t be able to complete your booking. I experienced this problem myself, so I contacted customer support. Here’s what they told me: “When creating your account you must be located within the UK mainland using UK based information. Our site and app will not, at present, allow bookings to be made outside of the UK.”

I was able to get around this issue by simply entering a UK postcode in the postcode box. I recommend using a friend’s address or even your hotel’s address. (I put in my old school’s address.) UK postcodes are 5-7 alphanumeric characters. Then click “address lookup,” enter any additional details, and you should be good to go. It doesn’t have to be your actual billing address associated with your credit card. Don’t know why… but it works!

Logistics

We booked our tickets about 3 months ahead of when we would be traveling, but that was during peak summer travel, so you may not need to book that far in advance. Once the booking was completed, I received our QR code tickets in a PDF file via email. There was no need to print them — the digital files worked fine.

Our train was departing out of King’s Cross Station in London (just like the Hogwarts Express). We’d just come from the airport, so we had plenty of time in the station before our train. Inside King’s Cross, there are several large boards that display train departure information as well as the platform you need to be at. But since we were there so early, our train information wasn’t even displayed until about 30-45 minutes before the scheduled departure.

When we finally saw our train’s information come up, as well as the designated platform, we made our way to the ticket gates. We scanned our tickets at the turnstiles and got on the train.

We departed King’s Cross at 12:18 p.m. and arrived at Edinburgh-Waverley Station at 4:41 p.m.

Convenience

As I mentioned, we came directly to King’s Cross from the airport, where we’d just arrived from the U.S. I’d normally never book such an ambitious travel itinerary for Day 1 — What if our flight was delayed? What if we couldn’t get from the airport to the train station in time? But I didn’t want to “waste” two days on travel, and since it was London, I felt pretty confident.

Another major factor in my decision was the fact that there’s a direct train from London-Gatwick Airport, where we arrived, to St. Pancras/King’s Cross. Which meant we didn’t have to worry about making a bunch of transfers. Even if you aren’t coming from the airport, King’s Cross is centrally located and easy to access from other places in London thanks to the Tube.

Arriving in Edinburgh at Waverley Station was also ideal. It was only a 10-minute walk from our hotel, not far off the Royal Mile — with Edinburgh Castle and all the other amazing things the city has to offer.

Security

There was no security checkpoint at either train station.

Experience

Dead-tired from the overnight flight, I started wondering whether I’d made a mistake as we boarded our train. Especially because I usually try to stay awake as long as I can during the first day in Europe in an attempt to beat jet lag. But when you’re settling in for a 4.5-hour train ride, there’s not much you can do to stay busy and stay awake.

The first thing I noticed when we boarded, as we found our seats, was that each seat number had a little colored lightbulb next to it with the word “Reservations.” This indicated whether the seat was booked — and if so, which point in the journey it was booked to. Ours had a red light and said “Kings X to Edinburgh.” That was something I’ve never seen on any other train, which I thought was pretty cool. Some seats had yellow lights, which meant it was only booked for part of the journey.

When the train began to move, I noticed that our seats were facing backwards to the direction of motion. Sometimes, I can get a little motion sick when that’s the case. So when we found a set of two seats facing forward, with a nice big window and green lights showing that they were unbooked, we asked the train attendant if we could move, and he said yes. It was great being able to move without worrying about sitting in someone else’s seat.

Speaking of the staff, everyone that worked on the train was very friendly and professional. They also offered a snack service where they come through with a little snack trolley. I think this might be common in the UK and Ireland (according to Harry Potter and Derry Girls) but it’s not as much of a thing in other countries where I’ve taken the train. It was also nice that the prices weren’t crazy inflated, and you could pay for all the snacks digitally.

The train also had free WiFi, UK plugs, and USB ports for charging your electronics. I found the train really comfortable. And it arrived in Edinburgh on time. No complaints! It was easy to get to from the train station to our hotel on the Royal Mile.

Find things to do in Edinburgh.

Value

While we traveled to Edinburgh by train, we ended up flying out of Edinburgh as we headed on to Dublin for the next leg of our trip. So our one-way train ticket on Lumo was $74.33 per person. It sounds a little bit expensive, especially knowing that you can often find pretty cheap flights between cities in Europe.

However, in our particular situation, taking the train was the cheapest option. Though I mentioned that I was fairly set on taking the train from the beginning, I did investigate flights to see whether it was justifiable from a cost perspective. And it wasn’t — flying was about $30-$40 more expensive, and that’s just for the ticket. With some budget airlines like RyanAir and EasyJet nickel-and-diming you for everything from a carry-on to a personal item, the true cost to fly may have been even more.

And while flying may have been faster from a travel-time perspective, it doesn’t take into account the time needed to commute out of the city to the airport, check in, go through security, etc. With the train stations’ central locations and quick boarding processes, I think the total time spent on travel is about the same. Plus, traveling by train is just more comfortable as you have more room to settle down and stretch out as needed.

In the end, I took a chance on the Lumo train, and it definitely paid off! I would absolutely travel with Lumo on my next train trip in the UK.

 

Have you ever traveled by train in the UK, or traveled with Lumo? Let me know in the comments!

-Cathy

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Originally Published on November 7, 2022.