Split Ticketing: Report successful routes here

always29

Hope you lovely people can help!

My brother has just announced his overseas wedding and is having his UK celebration in York in September and as our car is a bit of a gas guzzler and I am also expecting, every penny counts at the moment so thought of trains! The cheapest return I can find from London on the morning of 19th and returning on afternoon 20th is £49.50 - on top of this we need to get from south London to Kings X but oyster is probably the cheapest way of doing this...and book a hotel...and present.....weddings, eh?!

dzug1

always29 wrote: »

Hope you lovely people can help!

My brother has just announced his overseas wedding and is having his UK celebration in York in September and as our car is a bit of a gas guzzler and I am also expecting, every penny counts at the moment so thought of trains! The cheapest return I can find from London on the morning of 19th and returning on afternoon 20th is £49.50 - on top of this we need to get from south London to Kings X but oyster is probably the cheapest way of doing this...and book a hotel...and present.....weddings, eh?!

That's a cheap fare to me for that route - not the cheapest possible but still good

Take a quick look at Grand Central trains just in case they were missed on your search

KeithP

minerva_windsong wrote: »

Has anyone tried to get a split ticket for Preston to Grantham? I need one to go to my boyfriend's dad's house for the weekend at the end of July (the 24th to the 26th) and so far am having no joy - the non-split return is working out waaay cheaper than the singles!

Is it a lost cause or should I keep going? I'm currently splitting at Manchester Piccadilly and Leeds (where I'd have to change trains anyway) but am now wondering if a split at York is worth it...

OK, so the walk-up Offpeak Return is £54.10.
Depending on the time of day that you wish to travel,
Dep Preston 10:10, arr Leeds 12:09, £11.00.
Dep Leeds 13:04, arr Grantham 14:23, £8.45.
And the return...
Dep Grantham 18:17, arr Leeds 19:27, £15.15.
Dep Leeds 19:40, arr Preston 21:32, £11.00.

So, total for the return trip = £45.60.
These are Advance Singles, so you must travel on the booked train.
To get the Leeds-Grantham tickets at these prices they must be booked online using the NXEC website.

always29

dzug1 wrote: »

That's a cheap fare to me for that route - not the cheapest possible but still good

Take a quick look at Grand Central trains just in case they were missed on your search

Thanks, dzug, tried this but to no avail.

However, did spend some time looking at split tickets and ended up on the national express east coast website and managed to find non-split tickets for £37.40 each which gives me an extra twenty quid which hopefully might get me a nice maternity [STRIKE]tent [/STRIKE]outfit to wear to the event.

flyingirl

Today I was searching for a weekday off-peak day return fare from Reading to Birmingham New Street and was faced with the prospect of paying either £42ish for the standard advanced return ticket for £32 for 2x singles (£16 each way).

Seeing as this is only an hour's train ride, it seemed quite a lot of money so tried the usual trick of splitting at Banbury - the boundary station for the Network Southeast Railcard. So instead I would up paying £10 for a return between Reading-Banbury and £13 for a return from Banbury-Birmingham NS.

Apparently I could have had it even cheaper but I needed New Street station since it is 5 mins from the venue. Also since I don't know what time the events ends, I can take most trains with this ticket whereas I would have been tied to a specific train if I had gone with the 2x singles.

Total saving of £19, or 45%!! Thank you fellow MSEers for your help and guidance.

fredthefish

Hey, I've been playing around with this for ages but can't seem to figure it out. I need to travel from Newcastle to London on the 9th of August (any time in the day, not fussed) and return again on the 17th (preferably afternoon). I've got a 16-25 railcard, would be very grateful if anyone had any ideas.

KeithP

Hi Fred, welcome to the forums.
What have you found so far?

fredthefish

Well, I looked up the places a certain outward train stopped, started working through the prices of the singles (which takes a phenomenal amount of time to figure out if you're new to this) and only got a few stations through before I'd pretty much gone over the original price of the outward leg. I figured I must be doing it wrong, and decided to come here and ask for help. I had it all written in a notepad file but didn't save it - i could work it out again if you want?

dzug1

fredthefish wrote: »

Well, I looked up the places a certain outward train stopped, started working through the prices of the singles (which takes a phenomenal amount of time to figure out if you're new to this) and only got a few stations through before I'd pretty much gone over the original price of the outward leg. I figured I must be doing it wrong, and decided to come here and ask for help. I had it all written in a notepad file but didn't save it - i could work it out again if you want?

Forget split ticketing. It doesn't always work as you have found out the hard way. It's a last resort - not a first one

Go for advance purchase singles for the complete trip.

Mrs_Ryan

With the Newcastle to London, have you tried going Newcastle-Carlisle, then Carlisle-Euston? I did that for my mate last month and we managed to knock about 15 quid off the price of the outward leg.

dzug, problem is with the tickets on that route is that even the advance singles are expensive - I book tickets for my mate on that route on average once a month and it always ends up costing a packet even when we book way in advance.
Split ticketing works if you're savvy - I got a return to Newcastle for next weekend for £22 by splitting the route where I would change trains - there were no advance purchase singles available so it would have ended up costing £77! A simple split is good sometimes.