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Cheap Rail Tickets To St Pancras For Eurostar Con...
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Cheap Rail Tickets To St Pancras For Eurostar Connections
Having booked a package trip for our family of 4 over easter to Brussels by Eurostar, I had a shock when I realised that I had to fork out another £114 to get to St Pancras from our local station, a journey of only 45 minutes.
By phoning Eurostar direct to book the same trains the cost was £48 return for 2 adults & 2 kids. A saving of £66. The tickets are valid for any time of day. The number to call is 01233 617913, the staff were incredibly helpful.
Apparantly, if you book direct with Eurostar (which we didn't) your entire journey can be combined in one ticket. Also, if your outgoing train is delayed and you miss you connection, providing you have written confirmation from the ticket office, Eurostar should let you travel on the next train for no extra charge.
What I heard as a rumour has turned out to be great, it has taken me about 3 hours to find the information, but only 2 minutes on the phone to make the booking.
Well worth the saving and happy to share with you.
Claire - well done on mentioning this ticket which is issued to a destination called London International CIV. This means you are covered by the European international conditions of carriage (Convention Internationale pour le transport des Voyageurs' or 'CIV') rather than UK domestic conditions of carriage. Also as you point out it means that you're covered if a connecting train is delayed / cancelled. Your experience demonstrates that information on this ticket is very hard to find and it doesn't seem to be publicised at all. Why is this? Anything to do with privatisation and the fragmented organisation of passenger rail in Britain?
Through tickets from British stations to Eurostar destinations are available from some train operating companies now, but not from all stations. So tickets to London International CIV are useful and of course save money. You can enter 'London International' as a destination when buying a ticket online, for example on Virgin Trains' web site.
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Great tip - wish I had known about this last year when using the eurostar. We got the national express fun fares from Cardiff to London to save on cost and then took the underground to St. Pancras. On the way home the eurostar and underground service were both delayed so we ended up missing our coach and had to pay full whack for the next one. This was after travelling on the train overnight from Barcelona!
Thanks for the tip I'll be sure to remember it next time we go anywhere on the eurostar.
ps: we used nectar points to pay for the eurostar - saved us a fortune!
It doesn't work from all stations - I can get a ticket to London International from my local station, but it's the same price as a normal ticket to London plus tube fare so is no real help
Thanks for the tip. Mr Man was absolutely great and came up with several options for me and was able to advise me as to which was best based on the fact that we are travelling on Easter Sunday and there are engineering works going on.
It doesn't work from all stations - I can get a ticket to London International from my local station, but it's the same price as a normal ticket to London plus tube fare so is no real help
But worth knowing nevertheless
There are two codes for London International, and there is also a big price difference in them as well. I think what your saying in that its the same price plus tube, means that the fare hasn't been updated for a while.
Some stations cannot issue London International (CIV) tickets because the system hasn't had the fare downloaded to it.
I have had one of my family members have this problem at their local station, the station were adamant that the fare didn't exist. However on the online staff version the fare clearly was valid.
Printed it out for them and the station couldn't dispute it. They had to wait for a forced update.
The station then discovered the fare!
If you are having a problem at a local station with them not knowing the codes:
LONDON INTL(CIV) has a CRS code of LNE and a NLC of 5470
LNDON ESTAR CIV has a CRS code of LOE and a NLC of 9934
All depends on which route your on, as to which code you use.
Ex-Employee of a Train Operating Company.
Ticket routing and rules expert.
Been Penalty Fared on the Railway? PM me and Ill try to help you win your appeal.
Been sent a summons on the Railway? PM me and Ill try to help you.
You can enter 'London International' as a destination when buying a ticket online, for example on Virgin Trains' web site.
Which doesn't work, it just lists the standard domestic fares. at least that is the case for Virgin Trains' web site and a single journey from York to London Intentional.
Is it possible to book a ticket to London Intl CIV without a Eurostar ticket or would you need your Eurostar ticket for your London Intl CIV ticket to be valid?
I can't believe you've gone to so much effort to read this.
Eurostar has joined with 9 train operating companies:
Chiltern Railways, East Midlands Trains, First Capital Connect, First Great Western, Hull Trains, London Midland, National Express East Anglia, National Express East Coast and Virgin Trains.
Which doesn't work, it just lists the standard domestic fares. at least that is the case for Virgin Trains' web site and a single journey from York to London Intentional.
You're right. However last month when I started at the National Rail web site I was able to use 'Journey Planner' to select a journey and tickets to London International. In order to buy the tickets the National Rail web site transferred me automatically to the Virgin Trains web site, therefore I assumed (wrongly) that tickets to London International could be bought directly from the VT web site. This month when buying tickets from the National Rail web site you're offered the choice of no less than 17 different train operating companies and 2 third party retailers (Raileasy and Thetrainline.com) to buy from! Selecting Virgin or Cross Country then results in:
"Sorry, due to a technical issue we are currently unable to process your request".
But it is possible to buy from Raileasy who charge a booking fee of course.
ticketcollector - can you explain please why the TOCs' web sites don't offer London International as a destination?
ticketcollector - can you explain please why the TOCs' web sites don't offer London International as a destination?
I don't know about the other TOCs but with Virgin Trains to get London International (LNE) type '5' in the Station box and the first drop down station is '5470London International(LNE)'
I don't know about the other TOCs but with Virgin Trains to get London International (LNE) type '5' in the Station box and the first drop down station is '5470London International(LNE)'
Thanks very much for the tip, there are advantages in using the VT web site over others such as being able to choose which seat you'd like. However like so much on this thread, why does it have to be so difficult to find this stuff?
ticketcollector - can you explain please why the TOCs' web sites don't offer London International as a destination?
Yep.
Because according to the Fares Manual you are only supposed to buy one of these 'international' tickets in conjunction with a Eurostar ticket. But in reality...... !
Ex-Employee of a Train Operating Company.
Ticket routing and rules expert.
Been Penalty Fared on the Railway? PM me and Ill try to help you win your appeal.
Been sent a summons on the Railway? PM me and Ill try to help you.
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You're right. However last month when I started at the National Rail web site I was able to use 'Journey Planner' to select a journey and tickets to London International.
That doesn't work either for York to London, just the domestic fares again.
Is it possible to book a ticket to London Intl CIV without a Eurostar ticket or would you need your Eurostar ticket for your London Intl CIV ticket to be valid?
You need a Eurostar ticket, and must be able to present it on request. In the past you needed to show one (or at least confirmation of having booked, e.g. an email printout) in order to buy it in the first place, but obviously if Virgin is now selling them online this bit has been relaxed a little.
Liberty is allowing people to do things you disapprove of.
John Mortimer
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It doesn't work from all stations - I can get a ticket to London International from my local station, but it's the same price as a normal ticket to London plus tube fare so is no real help
It is a help, in that it provides a guaranteed connection if one of your trains is late. I'm not sure how it would work in practice, but theoretically if you bought a cheap non-refundable Eurostar ticket and your domestic train were late Eurostar would legitimately be able to refuse to rebook you, but if you had a CIV ticket this problem would disappear instantly. Presumably the same applies with Virgin's new 'Advance CIV' fares, though I don't see it being particularly easy convincing VT's Euston staff of this in practice.
CIV tickets always used to be the same price as a 'saver return' fare to U1, and they were generally only available from mainline stations, if only because no one else knew about them. Now it seems as if they're valid from every station and can be booked online, which is a definite bonus. In addition, they used to be valid at any time (i.e. including peak trains, but still at off-peak prices) and had a two-month period of validity rather than the one month you got with normal saver tickets; if this still applies it makes them even more attractive. It's just a shame they're so little publicised.
Liberty is allowing people to do things you disapprove of.
Pls be nice to all MoneySavers. There's no such thing as a stupid question, and even if you disagree courtesy helps. Take care over copyright. Use excerpts and links rather than copying long text. This site asserts copyright on all comments posted on the board.
Pls be nice to all MoneySavers. There's no such thing as a stupid question, and even if you disagree courtesy helps.
Cheap Rail Tickets To St Pancras For Eurostar Connections
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