This may sound odd but the last time I booked a return train journey in advance from London to Chester (about 4/5 years ago) I can recall that it cost me about £25.00 or less.
I've just checked on the prices for the same journey tonight and can't find anything cheaper than almost £70 !!!
This is for travelling off-peak on a Friday in six weeks time and returning on the following Sunday.
Have the fares gone up this much?
If they have, its a disgrace and needs to be investigated by the monopolies commission or some such organisation.
Does anybody know of a cheaper way to buy train tickets - I've tried the well known websites such as National Rail and The Trainline?
Use the car, always cheaper, even with the extortionate fuel prices. If they can't operate trains cheaper than personal vehicles they should be closed down.
I've seen an advance single for 19 quid for a few weeks hence, so if you were lucky you'd get 38 quid total.
Have you missed all the news stories on this in the past few years? :-)
Heh, not going to happen. Many of the services are subsidised, so the only way prices are going is up.
You want to go to the rail operator for your journey. You'll be wanting Virgin for yours. It's fairly marginal though - the ticketing engine and hence prices is shared between all of them.
It can also be worthwhile splitting your journeys up into portions that can be cheaper for a variety of reasons. It's perfectly legal provided your train actually stops at the station you are using as a change point. A couple of recent examples: any journey to an airport threatens to have a premium attached and Shrewsbury to Manchester Airport was about £16 more expensive than Shrewsbury to Manchester Piccadilly then Manchester Piccadilly to Manchester Airport. Likewise Shrewsbury to Huddersfield was about £10 more expensive than Shrewsbury to Manchester Piccadilly (Arriva Wales) then Manchester Piccadilly to Huddersfield (First Transpennine Express)
An even bigger disgrace is that we're paying you to use a train, even at that price through a massive subsidy.
National Express don't receive a subsidy for their service between Chester and London but are considerably cheaper. £5.50 for the Friday, and £9.50 for the return leg.
Zactly. Railways should either be competitive or scrapped. Give the little man some kind of a chance. Let's get a few more thousand on the dole, seems to be the "in thing". Problem is that the typical politician has zero clue about the real world. They don't live in (or are aware of) it.
If you don't mind a slower journey (Crewe-London in about 3hrs), tickets are *very* cheap on London Midland only to Crewe, then buy another ticket for Crewe-Chester.
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- you may get a very cheap Advance ticket, but even the walk-up fare is cheap.
You can get a return from brum to London for about £15. That is cheaper than parking/fuel. However that is per person so if there are two or more it is more expensive than fuel/parking.
I like train travel, but it suffers from a big problem, they let the public on.
Most of the sites price for the fastest "mainline direct" route rather than the "not so mainline pretty route". Mainline direct is generally more expensive than the pretty route. Often the journey times are not that dissimilar... If travelling near London it can be well worth avoiding a London station.
And quicker, Newcastle > Central London 3hrs or there abouts. Even taking into account the hour we are from Newcastle you couldn't drive it in that time, not legally or sensibly. Then you have the expense of extra charges and parking (if you can find somewhere) and after driving several hundred miles and fighting your way through the traffic you won't be particularly "fresh"...
Cut the stupidly tight safety regulations. They could still be way more safe than road travel but far cheaper.
The trouble is that a few people dead in one go on a train, once or twice a year is, seen as far worse than a few thousand in ones and twos throughout the year.
This is because you're travelling at busy times in both directions - Fridays and Sundays tend not to have cheap advance tickets, because the trains can be full.
It's difficult to tell because there will be some cheap tickets on the 2330 or whatever, but you don't want to take that. There is certainly tightening up of advance tickets (eg Friday afternoon Manchester-Cambridge in 2 weeks time has all Advances that are more expensive than a walk-on ticket, and they're all the same price - there's no variations between different trains as you'd expect). And train operators are messing around with the definition of peak time so that you can't travel on cheap flexible tickets through a good part of the day. All of this is hidden from the 'fares up by X%' headlines.
Fares pressure is coming from the Department for Transport - ie it's government policy that train travellers should pay more and the taxpayer should pay less for the railway. And the DfT demands large revenue payments from train operators that they have not much option but to comply.
Generally, a ticket is the same price whereever you buy it.
However, a few sites like Trainline, Raileasy and RedSpottedHanky charge booking fees, which adds a quid or two to your journey. Train operator sites don't. East Coast gives a 10% discount on their trains when booked through them. A few train operators like Chiltern have special print-at-home or similar deals that can only be booked through their site, but only for their lines.
As Neil said, London Midland would be my suggested way to go. The 'off peak' window for LM is often wider than that for Virgin too, so you can often be on a cheap 'super off peak' ticket when Virgin wants you on a peak or normal 'off peak'. For example, Bedford to Liverpool is 20 pounds return, flexible, usable on most LM trains except before about 10am and a few around 5/6pm.
doers that actually guarentee you a seat as if you''re in a car you always get a seat. Don;t you also have to make sure you get a particular train/time.
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