Book Trains with AI: 12306 and Trainline Skills

China Railway's 12306 platform handles more than 5,000 high-speed departures every single day, and the booking site is famously hostile to anyone who does not read Chinese. Trainline, on the other hand, aggregates 270+ rail and coach carriers across the UK and Europe — but its results page hides the cheapest fare three filters deep. Two of the world's biggest rail networks, two completely different interfaces, and the same problem: finding the right train takes more clicking than it should.

This tutorial shows you how to skip the clicking entirely. Two free browser-automation skills in the aiskill.market Travel category drive these sites for you — you describe the route in plain English, the AI agent navigates the real website, and you get structured results back with train numbers, durations, seat classes, and prices. No login, no Chinese keyboard, no guessing which fare is actually the cheapest.

Key Takeaways

1. The China Railway 12306 skill has 130 installs and returns full schedules between any two Chinese stations — train number, departure/arrival times, journey duration, and per-class seat availability — with no login required.
2. The Trainline skill covers UK and European rail plus coaches, returning departure/arrival times, number of changes, operator, fare type, and both the cheapest and first-class prices for each journey.
3. You ask in natural language — "trains from Beijing to Shanghai on July 3" — and the agent translates that into the exact origin, destination, date, and passenger parameters the site expects.
4. Both skills are read-only: they search and extract but never book or pay, so you keep full control of the actual purchase on the official site.
5. China Railway seat classes are tiered (Business, First, Second, plus sleepers on overnight routes) while Trainline returns a cheapest-plus-first-class price pair — so the same question returns network-appropriate detail on each platform.

Why Rail Search Needs an AI Agent

Rail booking sites are some of the hardest travel sites to automate. 12306.cn uses a Chinese-language interface, station names that must match its internal database exactly, and a date picker that rejects ambiguous input. Trainline layers a DataDome bot wall on top of a results page where the headline price is rarely the cheapest available fare.

A browser-automation skill solves both problems the same way: it loads the real site in a managed browser session, fills the form the way a human would, and reads the rendered results back as clean structured data. You never see the anti-bot challenge, the foreign-language labels, or the buried filters. You see train numbers and prices.

This is the core idea behind the 26 browse.sh travel skills now in the marketplace — each one wraps a single difficult travel site so an AI agent can use it reliably. The rail pair is the most useful example because rail interfaces are exactly where manual search breaks down.

How to Ask the AI for a China Railway Route

The China Railway 12306 skill takes a simple instruction. You give it two stations and a date, and it queries the live 12306 schedule.

A good prompt looks like this:

"Find trains from Beijing to Shanghai on 3 July, and show me the high-speed options with second-class availability."

The agent resolves "Beijing" and "Shanghai" to the correct station codes, submits the schedule query, and returns each matching train with:

• Train number (e.g. G1, the flagship Beijing–Shanghai high-speed service)
• Departure and arrival stations and times
• Journey duration (the G-series covers ~1,300 km in around 4.5 hours)
• Per-class seat availability — Business, First, and Second class on high-speed trains; hard/soft sleeper on overnight services

Because the skill reads availability per class, you can ask follow-ups like "which of those still has First class seats?" without re-running the whole search. It is read-only and needs no 12306 login, so it is the fastest way to scan the schedule before you commit to buying a ticket on the official site. China Railway's own English portal is also available at china-railway.com.cn if you want to verify a result manually.

How to Ask the AI for a UK or European Route

The Trainline skill works the same way but returns price-led results, which fits the deregulated European rail market where the same journey can cost wildly different amounts depending on operator and fare type.

A good prompt looks like this:

"Look up trains from London to Paris on 12 July for two adults, cheapest and first-class fares."

The agent uses Trainline's clean public locations-search API to resolve the station names, then drives a stealth browser session to pull the results. For each journey option you get:

• Departure and arrival times
• Duration and number of changes
• Operator (Eurostar, LNER, SNCF, FlixBus, and so on — Trainline returns coaches too)
• Fare type and the cheapest price plus first-class price

That cheapest-plus-first-class pairing is the whole point. On a London–Edinburgh route you might see a GBP 47 Advance fare next to a GBP 180 Anytime First fare for trains leaving 20 minutes apart — exactly the comparison Trainline's own UI makes you dig for. You can confirm any result directly at trainline.com.

China Railway vs Trainline: What Each Skill Returns

The split is intuitive once you see it. China's network is centrally operated, so the schedule and seat-class availability matter most. Europe's network is fragmented and competitive, so price comparison across operators matters most. Each skill returns what its network actually requires.

Combining Rail Search With the Rest of Your Trip

Rail rarely travels alone. A typical multi-leg trip mixes a train with a flight and a hotel, and the marketplace has skills for each leg. Once you have your train confirmed, the full 26-skill travel guide walks through how to chain them — search a flight into your departure city, book the train, then hold a car at the other end.

For the road portion of a trip, the AI car rental search guide covers Sixt, Avis, and Costco Travel skills that surface daily and long-term rates the same way these rail skills surface fares. And when you want to weigh a rail-plus-hotel package against an all-in alternative, the Expedia and Priceline comparison guide shows how AI can shortlist bundles across both platforms.

The pattern is consistent across all of them: describe the leg in plain English, let the agent drive the real site, get structured results, decide, and book on the official page yourself.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I search China Railway trains without speaking Chinese?

Use the China Railway 12306 skill. You ask in English — "trains from Guangzhou to Shenzhen tomorrow morning" — and the agent handles the Chinese-language interface, station-name matching, and date entry for you. It returns train numbers, times, durations, and seat availability in plain structured output, with no 12306 account needed.

Can the AI book my train ticket automatically?

No, and that is deliberate. Both the 12306 and Trainline skills are read-only: they search and extract data but stop before any purchase or payment. You review the results the agent returns, then complete the actual booking yourself on the official site. This keeps you in control of payment and passenger details.

Does the Trainline skill include first-class prices?

Yes. For every journey option, the Trainline skill returns both the cheapest available fare and the first-class fare side by side, along with the operator, duration, and number of changes. That pairing lets you weigh a cheap Advance ticket against a flexible First fare without re-running the search.

Which rail networks do these AI skills cover?

The 12306 skill covers all of mainland China's rail network, including high-speed G/D/C-series trains and overnight sleeper services. The Trainline skill covers the UK and continental Europe across 270+ rail and coach carriers, including Eurostar, SNCF, Deutsche Bahn connections, and intercity coaches like FlixBus.

Are these AI train skills free to use?

Yes. Both are free browser-automation skills in the aiskill.market Travel category, built on the browse.sh framework. You install the skill, give your AI agent the route, and it drives the live site. There is no subscription for the search itself — you only pay the carrier when you book.

Explore production-ready AI skills at aiskill.market/browse or submit your own skill to the marketplace.