Rail Travel: Tips on Cheap Tickets

carolgwen

In Eastbourne you can buy a rail ticket to London for £10.00 per person or £20.00 for 4 people return, from the Tourist Information Bureau. There are travelling restrictions and the ticket needs to be bought in advance, but you can still have a good day out in London. It's called a day save ticket.
Not many people know this!

peterholland

just bought £10 of bio diesel in wifes car it was 74.9 per litire from charles henry street BIRMINGHAM b12 osd if car still working will fill mine up

UltraCheap_2

Hello,

I am looking to book 2x tickets to go from London to Cookham (can also go to Maidenhead and get a lift from there).

Tickets are coming up as £32 pounds for 2 people, which is really expensive.

I don't have a railcard, but would consider buying one. With the railcard, the price comes down to £21.20.

Can anyone recommend a better deal?

Departing 9 December and returning 10 December. Flexible on schedule, and could depart on 8 December.

Wish there was a way to catch a bus there, but I haven't found any buses heading that way.

Also, I wish there was a way to get a bargain deal to a farther destination and then hop off the train early (Maidenhead and Cookham don't seem to fall within the train company deals).

If you have recommendations I would greatly appreciate to hear about them!

Many thanks!
:A

AP

gavina wrote:

Dear money saving experts.

I need to commute from Sheffield to Leeds, taking the Virgin service that stops only at Wakefield.

The cheapest option I can see would be to buy a South Yorkshire Travel Master, which covers all travel in the S Yorkshire area, including Sheffield, and a West Yorkshire Metro card, which covers all travel in the adjacent W Yorkshire area, including Leeds.

The conditions of carriage seem to quite clearly allow this, under section 19(a) below:

"19. Using a combination of tickets
You may use two or more tickets for one journey as long as together they cover
the entire journey and one of the following applies:
(a) they are both Zonal Tickets (unless special conditions prohibit their use);
(b) the train you are in calls at the station where you change from one ticket to
another; or
(c) one of the tickets is a Season Ticket (which for this purpose does not include Season Tickets or travel passes issued on behalf of a passenger transport executive or
local authority) or a leisure travel pass, and the other ticket(s) is/are not."

The definition of Zonal Tickets seems to include the passes I want to use:

"(q) “Zonal Tickets” are those tickets which permit travel only within a defined
area."

Despite the apparent clarity of these conditions, all the ticket office staff I have asked are absolutely adamant that I cannot use this combination of tickets on the Virgin service - though I might be able to use them on a slow train that stops at a station on the junction of the two regions. When I show them the conditions of carriage, they simply say, in effect, that these are just wrong, without offering any specific reason.

Can anyone advise me
a) if the tickets I want to use are permitted by the conditions of carriage?
b) how I can get a definitive judgement?

Thankyou very much for any help you can give me.

G

I used to travel from Sheffield to Wakefield to work between 2001 and 2005 and have been using a South Yorkshire TravelMaster ticket and a season ticket between Moorthorpe and Wakefield for my journeys on Virgin Train. I have had the odd argument with one or two train managers but generally there was no problem as this combination of tickets satisfy condition 17(c) of the National Rail Conditions of Carriage because the South Yorkshire TravelMaster ticket is not regarded as a season ticket for the purpose of that section.

However, somebody recently posted on this site saying that Virgin Trains are cracking down on the use of this combination of ticket.

See: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=2172724#post2172724

The Terms and Conditions at the back of the 'new style' zonal travelmaster says that: 'This ticket is valid ... to/from Denby Dale, Moorthorpe and South Elmsall rail stations, provided the train stops at these stations.' As I understand, these wordings can override what is said on the National Rail Conditions of Carriage.

To get round this problem, I would suggest:

1. Use a RailMaster ticket instead of the TravelMaster. This ticket is only valid on trains and supertrams and costs £51.40 monthly. Virgin Trains have been making a big deal out of the TravelMaster but nothing is said about the RailMaster.

or

2. Use the Northern Rail limited stop service via Barnsley. Northern Rail appears to continue to accept combinations of ticket on this service. The station at the boundary of South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire along this route is Darton and somehow this station is not mentioned in the Terms and Conditions at the back of the TravelMaster ticket.

Although I no longer travel on this route since 2005, I am interested to see how this development gets on, especially when more train fare rises are on the horizon (after the new year).

liz545

I realise I probably should've booked earlier, but I want to travel from Leicester to Manchester on either the 30th or 31st of December, then from manchester to London on the 1st or 2nd of January - any suggestions as to cheap fares or ways to split the journey? Thanks.

brucers9

Hello!

I'm trying to book tickets from Plymouth to Heathrow on 29/01/07 (am) and returning on 20/02/07 (am).

The fares I'm finding on qjump etc are about £140, or with two singles £100 each, but can anyone help me find a cheaper option?

BB

evesham1988la

brucers9 wrote:

Hello!

I'm trying to book tickets from Plymouth to Heathrow on 29/01/07 (am) and returning on 20/02/07 (am).

The fares I'm finding on qjump etc are about £140, or with two singles £100 each, but can anyone help me find a cheaper option?

BB

https://www.megatrain.com - altho the dates you want have not been released yet, you can buy a ticket between Exeter and London for £1 each way(by buying through this website) plus add-on the fare from Plymouth to Exeter (from £3 each way) and the Tube Fare from Waterloo to Heathrow - £3.50 (Oyster). Total - from £8.50 rtn.

anewman

Little_Em wrote:

With a little online research, I discovered that the problem lies in the fact that my railcard is not valid before 9am. By travelling "out" from Huddersfield at 5.15pm, and returning from home the following day I can travel on the cheap fare on the same trains.

Good idea. If you lived within west yorkshire the better option would be to get a wy student metro pass though I think

mcallister1

I got a great deal on taking the whole family up to Dundee from Chelmsford by booking early- however, trying to book my 16yr old to go from Chelmsford to Dundee 19-22 jan I can't get it cheaper than £29.70 each way, and that is with a yp card. I tried going via Glasgow on Virgin but couldn't get it cheaper because of crossing Scotland. Now I am thinking she would be better going from Stansted on easyjet where she can fly for £24 to Edinburgh then megabus it to Dundee.
Any thoughts? Tried the GNER offer but it was £30 each way. Any advice gratefully received.

pancakequeen

As I no longer have a car I need to travel from Preston to Lancaster for work every day, can someone please give me the cheapest way of travelling by rail. Thanks