ScotRail ticketing failed twice in November — a Trainline outage and an app crash

On the morning of 7 November 2023, technical problems left rush-hour commuters across Scotland unable to buy tickets: ticket machines were down at stations including Edinburgh Waverley, Perth, Falkirk High and Linlithgow, the ScotRail app threw 'oops!' errors, and some passengers said money had been taken without tickets being issued. The cause was believed to be a network outage between 08:00 and 09:00 at Trainline, the online ticket seller that powers ScotRail's booking platform. ScotRail apologised and said the issues had been reported for investigation.

The manual fallback barely existed: at Glasgow Central, pictures showed large queues with only two members of staff selling tickets manually. One commuter, Kirsty Fraser, said another member of staff eventually 'just let us all through the barriers as there was a double queue forming', while her change at Queen Street featured 'huge snaking queues on the platform' for onward tickets.

Two weeks later, on 28 November, the ScotRail app crashed for the second time in a month, this time for more than an hour during the evening rush, with lengthy queues at some of the country's busiest stations. ScotRail again told passengers who had pre-bought tickets in the app to buy another at the station and claim a refund; the RMT union said the repeated outages showed why stations need to be staffed for when the technology fails.

Nationwide ticket machine failures and long queues; some charged without tickets; two weeks later the app crashed again, with 45-minute waits at Glasgow Central.

One vendor, one channel: a network outage at Trainline became a nationwide sales failure for ScotRail within minutes.

The manual fallback did not exist: one staffed desk faced queues normally spread across machines and apps.

ScotRail encourages advance purchases in its own app, so every app failure lands directly on its riders' mornings — and twice in a month erodes trust in the channel.

If one vendor powers your entire sales channel, its outage is your outage — and manual fallback capacity is part of the product.

ScotRail apologised after both failures; after the second crash it again directed app purchasers to buy paper tickets and claim refunds, while the RMT argued the outages proved the case for keeping stations staffed.