Getting Cheaper Rail Travel

CrispyUK

ianwall wrote:

Another tip when using advance purchase Tickets on Virgin.

Normally, you must travel on the train that you've specified when booking. If you receive your tickets by post, your journey details are printed on the ticket and it's pretty obvious to the train manager when your travelling on a train you are not supposed to.

However, if you collect your tickets by fast ticket then the rail ticket comes seperatly from the reservation.

Every time I've travlled on Virgin (12 times every year), the train manager has only asked for the ticket part and not the reservation. This means I could have got away with travelling on a different train than I was supposed to.

Remeber though, this is could have just been by chance and if you are discovered you'll have to pay to upgrade to a Standard Open Single (hundreds of pounds).

Ian

In my experience they usually ask for the reservation as well most of the time, personally I wouldn't risk it.

A useful one with Virgin if you hold the Young Persons railcard is that you can use Saver tickets on any train, the online journey planners don't always show this up properly so you might not be able to get reservations on the righ trains if booking online but the Virgin website confirms the rule. Useful for travelling on the peak trains to / from London at a fraction of the std open cost.