Cheap Train Ticketes...

Gall1987

Gall1987

Gall1987

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Joined
1 Jan 2009
Posts
441
Hi.

Does anyone know the best website to use to get cheap train tickets? Or would National Rail be the best bet?

Looking at travelling from Crewe to Bristol Parkway on the 6th of February.

Cheers for any help :)
 
Book as far as possible in advance and watch out for added costs on sites like Trainline.

Most of the operating sites tend to back end onto the same National Rail system so you should get the same results on most of them.

Last time I bought tickets online I used East Midlands Trains site and it was fine (and didn't charge more for first class postal delivery).
 
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Always check directly with the operator. They usually have offers that sites like national rail don't pick up on.

edit:

I don't know what lines Crewe and Bristol Parkway are on, but a check on London Midlands (my guess) finds tickets of £19.80 (using a 16-25 railcard) on your date at various times of the day taking around 2.5hrs with 1 changeover.

http://tickets.londonmidland.com

edit2:

http://www.buytickets.virgintrains.co.uk

Virgin trains also £19.80 with railcard

So which operator do you like? I recommend Virgin. I've never had problems with their WCML service.
 
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I try to book up to 2 months in advance so you can get the £10 tickets advertised. There's usually only about 10 of them available though.
 
sr4470 said:
Return?

National Rail shows £30 without a railcard (so £20 with the discount), tried that?
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Yeh, I want a same day return.

Cheapest I've found on any of the mentioned sites is just under £30 with a railcard. £45 without a railcard! I think I may just go for that.

Does anyone know the latest that you can get an 'advance' ticket? I might be wrong but I think it's a week before?
 
ghost101 said:
Always check directly with the operator. They usually have offers that sites like national rail don't pick up on.
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No they don't.

The National Rail website will offer a choice of ALL ticket prices from all operators on the route and then give you a choice of ANY operator from which to buy the ticket at that price (you can for example buy a Penzance to London return on First Great Western from Scotrail if you wish).

The only thing you'll sometimes find at the operators own site is promotions such as FGW's current 10% off Advance Purchase fares - but you can still access this by using Nationalrail to find the prices and simply selecting your local operator to buy from when prompted, you cannot buy from Nationalrail themselves.

Never bother with thetrainline.com. You wont get a special deal and you WILL be charged a booking fee.
 
[TW]Fox;15782154 said:
No they don't.

The National Rail website will offer a choice of ALL ticket prices from all operators on the route and then give you a choice of ANY operator from which to buy the ticket at that price (you can for example buy a Penzance to London return on First Great Western from Scotrail if you wish).

The only thing you'll sometimes find at the operators own site is promotions such as FGW's current 10% off Advance Purchase fares - but you can still access this by using Nationalrail to find the prices and simply selecting your local operator to buy from when prompted, you cannot buy from Nationalrail themselves.

Never bother with thetrainline.com. You wont get a special deal and you WILL be charged a booking fee.
Click to expand...

I take it your not charged a booking fee with The Train Line then? Seems a bit silly that people even use it then!
 
I've used virgin, thetrainline and cross country trains. Cross country is the better of them in my opinion. Sign up for an account before ordering to make it easier to track your tickets.
 
I use east coast to buy my tickets, as the ATOS origin software (with the mixing deck) makes it easier to find the best deals, unlike thetrainline powered ones (IE virgin, NXEA, SWT)
 
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