Train Travel Triva!

Lemonade_Pockets

Hi

Getting my head in a tangle about what the cheapest way for my sister and her friend to travel round london is. Bear with me as its a little complicated.

Shes gets into london about 2pm tuesday, after which she'll probably spend most of the afternoon in and around central London.
I live in essex so she then needs to get out Brentwood/Shenfield/Billericay ideally as they are all within a 10min drive of my house.

There going back into London for the day + Evening on wednesday doing the usual shops and touristy things. Staying at mine again wednesday night.

Then back in on thursday morning to catch a midday train from Kings X back north. (they've already booked this bit and got the tickets)

I'm wondering what the cheapest way to do it is as a travelcard from shenfield costs about £10+ a day. So they're gonna end up spending £30 each on train fare's doing that.

They are students (don't have Young Persons card tho) and skint as usual so any advice would be much appreciated. They want the flexibility to travel around freely as much as possible

The best option i've come up with so far is telling them to get a oyster card and i will run them to and from Upminster station (about 15minutes drive for me)

dzug1

The Oyster/Upminster idea is probably going to be unbeatable from their point of view. If they stick to off peak it will be £7 a day max each.

Lemonade_Pockets

K cheers, thats what i thought wanted to make sure i hadn't missed something, as it will be a bit of a ball ache as no doubt they won't come home at a sociable hour! Family hey.

FARE-COP

Drive them to Upminster and get pay-as-you-go Oyster cards for both of them if they will be travelling wholly within the LUL area

Ensure that the cards remain in credit at all times and make certain that they touch-in and touch-out on the oyster pads on every journey they make.

That is the cheapest option. They will get the benefit of oyster fare reductions too.

If they fail to touch-in and out correctly they will pay too much in fares and might incur penalty fares if checked, which is becoming much more frequent.

Lemonade_Pockets

Thanks. I'm assuming they can hand the oyster card back in before they leave on thursday and get the remaining credit and £3 deposit back.

FARE-COP

Yes,

Let's say your friend buys a pay-as-you-go Oyster and loads it with £20.00 credit, makes a number of journeys and when finished, has a credit balance of £2.00 remaining on the card

Provided that they hand the card back in, they will receive a refund of the unused balance plus the deposit paid for the card without any handling charges.