Cheap Train Fares

PiKe

PiKe

PiKe

Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
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Location
Lake District
I'm going to Reading to see a friend in April, I priced up the journey on Virgin Rail and was surprised how much it was to cost, there were no advance tickets available on the route.

I saw an article on moneysavingexpert which said if you book your journey using singles then you should be able to get it cheaper, so I went to National Rail and planned my journey in 2 singles there and 3 on the way back, lo-and-behold, it was cheaper and advance tickets were available.

Is there any disadvantage to doing this other than potentially missing your connection?
 
The advance allocations for April won't be released yet which is why none are showing.

They show up about 2 months in advance.

That said, all Cross-country advance tickets are singles anyway. Virgin don't serve reading.
 
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Its called split-ticketing and its perfectly acceptable. You can even plan it so you don't have to get off the train, ie.

train goes from london to edinburgh, stopping in newcastle. you can buy a ticket from london to newcastle and a ticket from newcastle to edinburgh for the same service and correct times so all you have to do is switch tickets. If you're buying your ticket on the train and have a nice conductor, they'll sometimes work it out for you.

Almost always works out cheaper. Wish someone would make a split-ticket journey planner online.
 
Your link is invalid.

Anyway, the train line doesn't have split-ticket abilities, you have to think of the splitting method yourself.

What would be awesome is if it calculated all possible methods of getting a train from A to Z, with or without changes, and returned the results in order of price etc.

it is feasible for instance, that you could get a train from edinburgh to london direct but it could be done for the cheapest by buying individual tickets for each leg of the journey. It'd be a PITA to try and book all those tickets one at a time. There should be a search engine to do this.

Actually, there are probably people here capable of creating such an engine. It'd be very popular ;)
 
Sp00n said:
...so what is?

I used trainline when I went to london last nov, saved about £40 if I recall by buying 2 singles for specific timed trains.
Click to expand...

You have to pay the extra charges on it though. The train operators (Crosscountry, South West Trains etc) all use the same system so you get the same ticket prices but don't have to pay a booking / collection / delivery fee!
 
Sp00n said:
...so what is?

I used trainline when I went to london last nov, saved about £40 if I recall by buying 2 singles for specific timed trains.
Click to expand...

Working it out for yourself, train line comes out at about 145, doing it with 2 singles there and 3 back is about 115.
 
Sp00n said:
...so what is?

I used trainline when I went to london last nov, saved about £40 if I recall by buying 2 singles for specific timed trains.
Click to expand...
people are talking about using multiple singles on the same journey, not just one there, one back. This is usually the cheapest way.
Until virgin reintroduce Mobi-tix anyway
 
It's strange that on the way back I need to change at Manchester to get cheaper prices, whereas on the way down to Reading, Birmingham is the only change needed.

Completely bizarre.

What if you miss your connection doing it this way?

The train departing Manchester is the same time as the one that gets in.
 
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it depends, you'll find with a lot of the shorter legs they're not specific advance fares. i.e. you can get any train on that route. It might mess you up for a later one or one that isn't though, so always leave plenty of time for connections. Ideally avoiding them.
 
Abraham said:
it depends, you'll find with a lot of the shorter legs they're not specific advance fares. i.e. you can get any train on that route. It might mess you up for a later one or one that isn't though, so always leave plenty of time for connections. Ideally avoiding them.
Click to expand...

Cheers.
 
All the prices should be the same as they all using the same pricing engine. Thetrainline is not worth bothering with as they charge a booking fee for some cards whereas other operators dont.

The reason two singles is often cheaper than a return is because these days most advance purchase tickets are sold as singles - so the price of two singles is thus compared unfairly against the price of a flexible walk on return.
 
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