Cheap Train Fares guide discussion

Titas

If travelling to Manchester Airport from West Yorkshire there are some absolute bargains if using Northern services only eg £5 each way if booking 3 weeks in advance on Northerns website. You have to travel on Calder Valley route from Brighouse or any station past on route going towards Southport and using the advanced search feature on ticket booking page, change Going Via to Salford Crescent Station if you don't it wont work for return.
You may have to experiment using different options and as these are Advance fares you have to catch the train specified but even if only booking the day before there are still very cheap fares.
As ever if depending on trains to catch a plane allow loads of time, better to be 5 hours early than 5 minutes late

dekkard

Ebookers currently offering 3% cashback on UK train bookings.

anoraknerd123

Hi MSE-ites. I am trying to book an advance first-class ticket from Euston to Windermere. I realise that the last leg will not offer first-class travel.
However, one website requires me to change at Preston. Another requires me to change at Lancaster. Since both the Virgin train and the Northern train also stop at Oxenholme, I would like to stay on the first-class service as far as possible and change at OXN. I do not want to breach the T&C, Is there a way to buy the actual ticket for the actual journey I want?

miller

I went on the virgintrains.co.uk website; under 'Extra Journey Requirements (optional)' change Journey Options to 'Direct Services Only' from 'All Services' and Go Via to Oxenholme.

That seems to force the change there.

anoraknerd123

That was really quick. Thank you. I have tried for the Sunday 21 July but regrettably it did not work for me.
I shall keep trying though. (I might wait until the timetables for the summer are finalised.)

miller

According to https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/44703.aspx the booking horizon for Sundays is only up to 14 July for advance tickets.

Not sure why the trick I used didn't work with regard to changing at Oxenholme. Maybe worth trying fiddling with the various options/different websites.

Good luck (oh and welcome to the forum)!

anoraknerd123

NB I am not actually a total newbie - my previous account ANORAKNERD seems to have got stuck in a muddle of "new password not being recognised". It was quicker to reinvent myself.

The_Miser

BEWARE
As a pensioner my council subsidises cheap rail fares subject to asking them to issue the document by mail.


I applied, citing the code issued by the Council and got nothing. I chased up and they claim that they issued a second voucher. Fine, but nothing arrived. I reported this and their answer was that they will never ever issue a ticket to this postal address again. Ergo my council subsidy is lost for the rest of my life.


It transpired (and I have the letters to support this) that the Post Office dacided. without reference to me and without any permission, to send all my mail to a foreign country. Citing their regulations they have refused to cover the cost of retrieving three months of correspondence - and there were NO travel tickets in the items when I did retreive them at personal cost. The Ombudsman ruled in their favour because I didn't claim in the few days allowed. They even refused to cover registered letters missdelivered and destroyed


In dealing with them do not assume you will get anything

Grandad2b

Example: my missus is going to visit a friend in Lincoln. We live near Doncaster. The return advance fare from Donny to Lincoln is £18.10 yet if I put our local station as the start it shoots up to £42.60, even though a return from our station to Donny is £11.00.

This split fare isn't found by raileasy either

Grandad2b

tor_green wrote: »

Spent most of morning trying all your suggested ticket split tools and they definitely did not provide me with any cheaper deals..?

Are we supposed to split the journey ourselves into sections to keep the costs down.. or is the tool supposed to look at the options which we can then select..I got the same prices quoted across all sites! Then as I repeated searches over the same sites with similar dates over a 2-3 hrs period they all went up!!!!

Theses search engines are all rigged to cost you more and more money without giving you time to think of your options it is disgusting.

Thank you Though money savings expert for trying to help us

I completely agree. Look for tickets from Reading to Wakefield. There are two viable routes - via Brum or via London. Raileasy doesn't appear to know the Brum route even exists - it insists that you have to go via London and make your own way across the city.

You'll find that because the websites have set cookies on your computer that repeated searches cost more - the software recognises your earlier search. I try to use a different browser (firefox or opera) if I'm searching for the same thing more than once.