Rail Travel: Tips on Cheap Tickets

adamtrainman

I just wondered how long people would allow?

sianebu

Everytime I try to do a search with Virgin Rail I can never find the advertised £11 sale tickets :mad:

howskint?

I'm wanting to travel from Derby to London on 4th July, returning on 5th July. At the moment the cheapest I can find is £106 return. I'm sure I've never had to pay that much. Do you think it's worth waiting til nearer the date? Would I get a better deal going into the train station to buy the tickets?
Thanks

Livingthedream

howskint? wrote: »

I'm wanting to travel from Derby to London on 4th July, returning on 5th July. At the moment the cheapest I can find is £106 return. I'm sure I've never had to pay that much. Do you think it's worth waiting til nearer the date? Would I get a better deal going into the train station to buy the tickets?
Thanks

There seams to be engineering works on that weekend, but you can get a limited direct service to London St P for £54 off peak return but you can try this for a split;
Derby to Birmingham New St
Birmingham New St to London Euston

Some good savings to be had but make sure you give yourself plenty of time to catch your connections (30mins-45mins) in case of delayed trains

Bogof_Babe

I just searched on National Express for the Derby to London (any) return and it brought up loads of £54 return tickets. I don't know what London station the poster is travelling from, but if they can be flexible it looks like £54 for the return trip is generally available for the dates in question.

lochmaben_2

New subscriber to the site - so hello to everyone .

All the talk of cheap travel. Live in Scotland and ScotRail (god bless them) are offering free kids travel off peak all week. Unbelievably this is NOT an offer and NOT subject to availability and does NOT need booked in advance!!

You can go anytime at on Sat / Sun and after the peak trains Mon- Fri.

Seems really good value with no catches.

G

Livingthedream

lochmaben wrote: »

New subscriber to the site - so hello to everyone .

All the talk of cheap travel. Live in Scotland and ScotRail (god bless them) are offering free kids travel off peak all week. Unbelievably this is NOT an offer and NOT subject to availability and does NOT need booked in advance!!

You can go anytime at on Sat / Sun and after the peak trains Mon- Fri.

Seems really good value with no catches.

G

It a great deal, used it many a time to go to Edinburgh or Dundee as its cheaper than using my F&F railcard. You can use any Train operating companies trains ie NXEC or Crosscountry not just Scot rail's, there is a few restriction on this but not many.

http://nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/promotions/pr53a4ffc35ce74101ed57e9b82fad4e/details.html

Bogof_Babe

I saw that National Express were accepting bookings up to 9th August, and as that is a day I want to travel I put in all the usual details last night, only to find there were only two £11 Advance tickets showing as available, one at 05.58 and the other at about 22.30, taking 8 hours overnight for a 3.5 hour journey (obviously included long waits at changes). All the others were £19.50.

Anyway I decided to see if any of the other providers had anything more suitable at the £11 price. Couldn't get Qjump to work for some reason, there was no right-hand scroll bar so couldn't get down the page. However I found a multitude of £11 tickets on the Trainline site, so I booked one, thereby incurring a £1 booking fee, which National Express don't charge.

Today I re-visited the National Express site, only to find there are now loads of £11 tickets available for that date, so I could have saved myself the £1.

If it wasn't that there were the two showing at silly hours, I would have assumed they hadn't been released yet and waited until today to try again. However it gave the impression that they must be all sold out (which I thought was possible given the time of year and the fact that I was travelling from a holiday resort).

It would be good if they could give some clearer indication as to whether these bands of ticket prices have been released and sold out, or whether they are yet to come.

This post is really just a bit of a rant, and a warning not to make any assumptions from what you see (or don't see!) on the screen.

adamtrainman

To be perfectly honest some good advice has come from your mis fortune, just hold out a day after the release date as it can take a day to get all the fares on.

Danny983

I have a new job and will be commuting to work on the train to Manchester from Sandbach or Crewe.
I've looked on the national rail site and a season ticket seems the cheapest way to go but is there nowhere you can buy them online?

Does anyone else have any other tips at getting cheaper tickets for Mon-Fri?