I can never find cheap rail tickets!

Troythecat

Hello
I want to travel from Edinburgh to Leeds on 5th March until Sunday 7th March, flexible on time, but can't find anything cheap...I never seem to be very lucky or clever at booking cheap trains
Can anybody help?
Also what is the best site on the web to use?

Can also travel from Glasgow

jd87

Best site to use is always https://www.eastcoast.co.uk for any journey. It's especially good for that journey which actually uses East Coast trains, because they have extra discounts for their own tickets.

What's the cheapest you've found so far? It looks do-able for just over £50, assuming you don't have a railcard.

Split-ticketing somewhere like Newcastle or York might make it cheaper.

Troythecat

thanks jd87 I will have a look

alanrowell

You are really booking a bit too late for the best fares and generally travel on a Friday is more expensive as that's when people want to travel

If you'd booked 2 weeks earlier you could have paid £15.60 each way

But check-out 1st class - I always find that those fares don't increase as quickly so you might find you get 1st class for the same price as 2nd class

AirlieBird

Best website to use is always the train company's own website as some will offer discounts or promotional fares on their trains that are only available through their website. In your case this would be [strike]EastCoast as has already been suggested[/strike] CrossCountry, although a train Leeds-York and EastCoast from York may be cheaper.

If you don't know the operator for your journey, then any of EastCoast, Southern, London Midland or SouthEastern are a good place to start as they all use the WebTIS system which many people, including me, prefer over the trainline based system all other operators use.

alanrowell

For direct trains from Edinburgh to Leeds the company is Cross Country - though all the booking websites will show the trains for all companies

Troythecat

thank you all, I will have a scout about today and see what I can find X

Troythecat

Cross Country does seem to be the cheapest fares for my dates...found 2 cheap no change journeys but when I went back in they weren't there or had gone up in price...is that possible? or is it too early in the morning for me?

dzug1

Troythecat wrote: »

Cross Country does seem to be the cheapest fares for my dates...found 2 cheap no change journeys but when I went back in they weren't there or had gone up in price...is that possible? or is it too early in the morning for me?

It means someone else has bought them - ie sold out. It's not impossible they will reappear - but extremely unlikely.