Stoke-on-Trent - London Euston: Expensive train fares

spot_on

As someone who travels from Stoke-on-Trent to London fairly regularly on Saturdays with Virgin Trains, I am used to paying between £6-9 single fare (outward 7am-9am, return 5-7pm) with a railcard. Since the start of the year I have been searching for similar priced fares, but the cheapest I have been able to find is £19 for a single (Virgin Trains). I understand there was a sale on recently, which I missed due to being on holiday, but I have searched for tickets for April, today, and can still only get £19 single fares. I have tried various train sites for tickets. I was wondering if anyone had any theories or knowledge as to why the prices seem higher than normal.

Many Thanks

Peter

p00hsticks

I think you may be looking too far in advance - The 'best fare finder' part of the virgin website is saying that advance tickets are currently only available up to Thursday 11th April. And there are £12 singles showing for Saturday 6th April, though not unitl late morning.

spot_on

Thanks for the info. I wasn't aware of the "best fare finder". I was hoping to book tickets for the 30th March, but they are £41. A fortnight earlier (16th March) they are £10. Do you think if I tried to book for the 30th March in two weeks they would be £10 ?

dzug1

Virgin have not released advance fares for that weekend yet - so the fare you are seeing will be a walk on fare. They may be expecting major engineering works or it they may just be a bit slow.

So yes if you wait a week or two they may appear.

Are you aware of

1 the Virgin superoffpeak travelcard at £38.25 - includes tube travel? Not on sale for your weekend but could be useful for others

2 The cheaper but slower London Midland service? You can do the return trip for about £17 on your date - LM have released tickets

tiny_courageous

30th March is Easter weekend so there may well be engineering work/changes to train times.

spot_on

dzug1 wrote: »

Virgin have not released advance fares for that weekend yet - so the fare you are seeing will be a walk on fare. They may be expecting major engineering works or it they may just be a bit slow.

So yes if you wait a week or two they may appear.

Are you aware of

1 the Virgin superoffpeak travelcard at £38.25 - includes tube travel? Not on sale for your weekend but could be useful for others

2 The cheaper but slower London Midland service? You can do the return trip for about £17 on your date - LM have released tickets

Thanks again for the help. I wasn't aware of the superoffpeak ticket, so cheers. I am aware of London Midland, but like you said it takes longer than Virgin. It is a good alternative if I got no luck getting cheap tickets with Virgin.

p00hsticks

spot_on wrote: »

Thanks for the info. I wasn't aware of the "best fare finder". I was hoping to book tickets for the 30th March, but they are £41. A fortnight earlier (16th March) they are £10. Do you think if I tried to book for the 30th March in two weeks they would be £10 ?

See here
http://www.virgintrains.co.uk/tickets-offers/

select the 'find out when to buy advance tickets' option about half way down the page to see the dates for which tickets have been released. Note that although the 30th and 31st of March are greyed out, indicating tickets have not yet been released, if you move across to April (click on the right arrow to move forward a month - you then need to select the 'find out when to buy advance tickets' option again ) you can see that some April tickets have been released .

As others have said, 30th March - 1st April is Easter weekend - therefore there's a good chance of engineering works, which delays the release of tickets. It's also a busy time, so potentially there will be fewer cheap tickets and they'll be snapped up more quickly than usual.

Once the dates you want are showing up as being 'available for reservation' use the 'best fare finder' part of the screen on the right to see exactly whaty price tickets are available for what trains - and you can go on to buy them from this site to pick up at the station with no booking fee.