Rail Travel: Tips on Cheap Tickets

Jeff_Bridges_hair

London Midland £15 Promo

Be quick

The Great Escape is back!
Between Saturday 20 October – Sunday 4 November 2012 you can take off for the day for just £15 (£5 for children) with our Great Escape ticket - or go first class for just £10 more. Railcard holders get an even better deal at just £9.90.
You can visit as many or as few places as you like - the ticket gives you a day's unlimited travel on London Midland trains across our network after the morning peak period.
Click here to find out which days still have vouchers available.
When can you travel?

Travel anytime at weekends or on services scheduled to depart after 0930 on weekdays, although there are no time restrictions within the Network West Midlands area or for southbound journeys between Liverpool and Crewe on any day. If you're travelling to London from stations north of Rugby, you can also use the 0833 Crewe-Euston train. Northbound travel is allowed on the 0904 Rugby-Crewe, 0917 Nuneaton-Crewe and 0923 Atherstone-Crewe services.
Please note: Our weekday departures from London Euston between 1700-1815 are already very busy, so to help everyone have a more comfortable journey, Great Escape tickets can’t be used on these trains Monday-Friday.
Buying your tickets

Up to 6,000 Great Escape tickets are available on each day of the promotion, but you need to be quick - once they're gone, they're gone! To get your ticket you need to download your special voucher and bring this with you to any staffed station on the London Midland network so that we know which day you're travelling and how many tickets you're entitled to buy. The full Terms and Conditions are on the voucher.
How much do Great Escape tickets cost?



Adult
Child
Standard class
£15
£5
First class
£25
£10


Even cheaper with a Railcard

Standard class

First class

Adult

Child

Adult

Child

16-25, Senior, Disabled, Two Together

£9.90

£16.50

Network, Annual Gold card, Family & Friends

£9.90

£2

HM Forces

£9.90

£2

£16.50

£4.75

If you are using a Network Railcard or Gold Card to obtain your discount you can still use your Great Escape ticket anywhere on our network, including stations north of Long Buckby.
Avoid the queues!

Our Great Escape days are very popular, so to avoid queuing please try to collect your tickets in advance (outside the rush hours is best).
Tickets are available for collection from all London Midland-served stations from Wednesday 3 October 2012.
Due to a technical issue, Great Escape tickets are not available to collect from Monday 1 October 2012 as planned and we are sorry for any inconvenience caused.
Travel more comfortably

We will be providing additional seats on some of the busiest off-peak trains during the Great Escape offer (20 October – 4 November 2012).
To see which services have additional seats please click here
Please check train times before travelling to ensure your journey is not affected by engineering works.
Stuck for ideas of where to visit?

Check out our destination guides for ideas on days out to some of the UK's most beautiful, historic and exciting places.
Plus save even more money with our fantastic 2 for 1 offers at over 100 attractions, theatres and restaurants in London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Stratford-upon-Avon.
Tickets selling fast...

Several thousand vouchers are available for each day of the promotion, but certain days will be extremely popular. The availability calendar below shows how many vouchers are still available for each day:

Carcluster

Here in Brighton you can just get on a bus and get a reasonably priced train ticket (with time-travel restrictions) to London. A few weeks ago it was £14. Couldn't come back between 4:45PM and 7:00PM, though.

Johnny_Barnes10

Long shot (I know), but can anyone get a return to Newcastle from Wolverhampton/Birmingham for less the the standard £98.50? Going up Sat 27/10, returning next day. Tried looking from a few weeks back but no cheap advanced tickets

Ps - there's 4 of us.

terryw

Johnny_Barnes10 wrote: »

Long shot (I know), but can anyone get a return to Newcastle from Wolverhampton/Birmingham for less the the standard £98.50? Going up Sat 27/10, returning next day. Tried looking from a few weeks back but no cheap advanced tickets

Ps - there's 4 of us.

East Coast offer cheaper tickets if more than 3 travelling. Worth a look

dzug1

terryw wrote: »

East Coast offer cheaper tickets if more than 3 travelling. Worth a look

But East Coast don't run from the West Midlands - and Cross Country who do don't offer Groupsave

To take advantage of this you would have to split tickets at the point where you change trains and swap companies - Doncaster or York probably

Johnny_Barnes10

Thanks both, will look into it.

reeluff

Hello,
I am sure this has been covered but googling and searching is proving not to give me the answer I want, probably the wrong search term.

Basically all I want is a search tool, that I can enter my from and to destination and it will give me the cheapest ticket available, not date specifiic, any time in the future, very flexible.

For example I would like to visit somewhere, a specific date of travel is not required...any date would be fine, just the cheapest!

All of the train fare finders I have used seem to all ask for a specific date of travel, does not help me.

Any ideas? Thankyou.

wealdroam

reeluff wrote: »

Hello,
I am sure this has been covered but googling and searching is proving not to give me the answer I want, probably the wrong search term.

Basically all I want is a search tool, that I can enter my from and to destination and it will give me the cheapest ticket available, not date specifiic, any time in the future, very flexible.

For example I would like to visit somewhere, a specific date of travel is not required...any date would be fine, just the cheapest!

All of the train fare finders I have used seem to all ask for a specific date of travel, does not help me.

Any ideas? Thankyou.

To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing yet available that meets your requirements.

cosmojohnson

reeluff wrote: »

Hello,
I am sure this has been covered but googling and searching is proving not to give me the answer I want, probably the wrong search term.

Basically all I want is a search tool, that I can enter my from and to destination and it will give me the cheapest ticket available, not date specifiic, any time in the future, very flexible.

For example I would like to visit somewhere, a specific date of travel is not required...any date would be fine, just the cheapest!

All of the train fare finders I have used seem to all ask for a specific date of travel, does not help me.

Any ideas? Thankyou.

Unlikely to be possible: for longer distance travel where very cheap 'Advance' fares are available, there is a quota available for each tier of Advance ticket price. Hence you need to enter a date, as for some days/times (e.g. a Friday evening) the cheapest will sell out quicker than others.

laird

Reeluff, brfares.com would be the best option, use that to find the cheapest posible fares then use any of the train company websites to find out which days and trains your chose fare is available for.

You will need to read carefully the restrictions for the fares you are interested in on brfares as there are quite a number of fares shown which will be restricted to only a limited number of groups (e.g. staff only).