Crazy Ticketing Prices

[johncard]

OK, I give up. Is there any cheaper walk-on fare than £30.50 saver return valid between York and Newcastle? 2 "could be cheaper" singles work out at £40.80. York - Heworth (a bit of Nexus) is also £30.50 saver return. York - Metrocentre is... well... £30.50 saver return. Prudhoe is, well you get the idea. It seems that it's only from Hexham that Northern start charging anything over GNER! Mighty generous but of no use to our good selves...

[salopiangrowler]

Doncaster-Retford Northern £20 odd 1 hour 23 minute
Doncaster-Retford GNER £6.90 15 minutes.

[Tomnick]

Don't know what work of fiction the £20 Retford - Doncaster fare was obtained from. A SOR Retford - Doncaster is £6.90, which will (if you really felt the need) be valid via Sheffield on a Northern through service - but only because it's a through service. It'd probably be £20-odd if you booked via Sheffield (which you'd have to do if it wasn't a through service), but then that's not really what you'd do to get from Retford to Doncaster.

[salopiangrowler]

that was first class sorry.

[salopiangrowler]

Yep, £6.90 Standard £23.40 First. regardless of route.

[southcoasttrains]

Yep, £6.90 Standard £23.40 First. regardless of route.

Any Permitted route actully.

Retford to Doncaster tickets are valid on the direct GNER services or Hull Trains. And via Barnetby.

[southcoasttrains]

There are a number of reasons why walk on fares are OTT. I admit most of the fares I sell, I feel are overpriced and you could get a cheaper flight to Barcelona.

Most companies have got new rolling stock or refurbished them, basically a percentage is going towards the leasing companys.
Network Rail track access charges and penalties.
Overcrowding on trains, Virgin Cross Country is a very good example where they run 4 car trains everywhere, back in the old days they were 7 coaches.

Peak time fares are controlled by the DfT and off peak fares are controlled by the train companies themselves.

You might find splitting the tickets up can work out cheaper providing the train your taking stops at that station. for example, if you buy a ticket from London to Birmingham and you split it by doing Euston to Rugby and then Rugby to Birmingham, and you take a service that doesn't stop at Rugby even it passes through it.

If your travelling long distance, its best to book between 12 weeks and a month in advance.
* Avoid weekends and avoid places where there are big events taking place, ONE, GNER, Virgin, East Midlands Trains and FGW don't sell cheap seats as they'll know the train is going to be busy.
* If travelling on a service going between Birmingham and Reading, book well in advance, it's 10% chance you'll get a Virgin Value ticket if you leave it to last minute.
* if your under 26, get a Young Person Railcard.
* If you have a child that travels with you, get a Family railcard, you'll get 1/3 off the child gets up to 81% off.
* Travel with East Midlands Trains lol, singles are very cheap and being owned by Stagecoach, its possible MegaTrain might have tickets.

Hope this helps everyone.

[salopiangrowler]

Yep, £6.90 Standard £23.40 First. regardless of route.

Any Permitted route actully.

Retford to Doncaster tickets are valid on the direct GNER services or Hull Trains. And via Barnetby.

Still its a rediculous fare difference.

Standards ok on a 15 minute journey and damn excellent via Barnetby. and the first class is the opposite way round.

[XPTE]

That's only because of engineering works between Dorridge and Snow Hill though - ordinarily I think it's only valid on Chiltern, which doesn't matter anyway because Moor Street is just as convenient for the city centre as New Street, if not more so because it's less crowded - you can catch Chiltern through to New Street on a Sunday at the moment.

I got a £16 return Birmingham Moor Street yesterday. First time I've gone to Moor Street too. Moor Street is very different from New Street. Far far ess crowded and hectic. Moor Street only has two platforms which I was expecting. But what struck me and took me by surprise was how GWR it was with all old style signage about the station, no modern shops like WHSMITH's and Upper Crust, etc. I liked the dim platform lighting, allmost gas lamp style lighting. None of those pre-recorded announcements either, but live announcements. Incredibly I didn't even spot anyone using a mobile phone either. It was like stepping back into yesteryear, and before my time too. I was half expecting a steam train or old diesel loco or DMU to even pull into the platform. But a 168 pulled in. Nice station, and a refreshing change to New Street. Is Snow Hill like this too?

[richard222]

Simple answer, No.

Snow Hill is an ugly station perched under an office block.

Richard

[davidaward]

Another good example. This weekend myself and my brother were of to the SVR for a working weekend. My car couldn't be fixed in time so I tried to get cheap train tickets to either Wolverhampton or Shrewsbury to get the bus to Bridgnorth. No cheap fares available at such short notice (less than 24 hours)- cheapest I could get was 50 quid, even with my so called railcard discount. It worked out cheaper to pay my father's fuel bill of 35 quid to take us there and back, two separate 160 mile round trips!- The whole journey would have taken 3 1/2 hopurs approx by public transport due to poor connections. It takes 1 3/4 hours normally in the car.

And we're supposed to be encouraged to actually use the train rather than cars. As long as it still works out cheaper to buy my fuel I will continue to use my car for long distance travel and its usually quicker and much more convenient, not particularly environmentally friendly, but I'm afraid my wallet comes first...................

[danny3]

I found another example almost by accident. (not much though)

(Just for those that don't know the Route - Dover Priory - Kearsney - Shepherd's Well, Snowdown - Aylesham - Adisham - Bekesbourne - Canterbury East - Selling - Faversham - Teynham - Sittingbourne - Towards London)

From Canterbury East to Colchester (Cheap Day Return with Young Persons Railcard) - £22.00 (Full cheap day Fare - £33.30, Standard - 53.50)
From Aylesham to Colchester (Same as above) - £18.95 (and the train travels through Canterbury East as well) (Full Fare - £28.70, Standard - 47.80)

(it actually costs less to travel 11 minutes more on the train!)

Adisham, Bekesbourne, Snowdown, Shepherd's Well, Faversham, Selling are all the same price as Aylesham

Dover Prior and Kearsney are the same as Canterbury East.

[XPTE]

I would be interested to read about when you're looking to make a long distance journey train and you're looking at the available fares, what becomes the cut off point in the prices of the fares available in saying "No I'm not paying that sort of money. I'll go by coach instead." or even not bother making the journey atall.

My example. London-Bristol and back again. Where I make the journey every 3-4 weeks on average. I allways look for the fast services from Paddington(though they're not as fast as they used to be pre FGW, as I've mentioned a few times) first. Allways try and get the £10.50 single fares, and most of the time I'm able to get these now. The next fare up from that is £13.50, though I've never actually seen any of these available atall. The next fare up from that is £14.50. And will pay that fare if the cheaper fares are gone. Any more expensive than that(of which the next fare up is £17.50 and that becomes the cut off point in me saying "Am not paying that thank you very much.".

If I can't get any single tickets for £14.50 or less, I then look at going the long way round from Waterloo via Salisbury. This usually involves a boring 25 minute wait at Salisbury. Can usually get fares for £10.50 on this route if booked ahead. Just a slightly bit more rarer are the £8.90 fares. If none of those fares are available though, the price goes right up to £25.10 single. Of which I then say "well stuff getting the train at these prices. I'll get Megabus instead.".

Fortunately I haven't had to get Megabus instead of the train for over a year now. But am going to have to in a couple of weeks as all the cheap/reasonably priced train fares are not available for the homeward journey. So booked Megabus for just £1.

My cut off point in deciding whether to book the train or not is fairly low on the fares prices really. I could go a little higher than my £14.50 cut off point if I wanted to. But I'd rather save money. It can add up to quite a saving after a year. £10.50 for a single journey of this length I consider good value. However £17.50 or higher is where I consider it becomes quite expensive.

What are your examples for the journeys you regularly make?

These truly utterly UTTERLY ridiculous overpriced fares such as £73.80* for a single ticket from London Kings Cross-York for example. Do any of you on here actually pay these sort of prices??

*quite remarkably the name of the ticket at this ridiculous price is "Saver Single"!!!!!! They must be having a laugh!!! How can you SAVE money by buying one of these tickets at these prices???!!!

[XPTE]

A shame we didn't get any more examples like mine as to the journeys you plan to make, but if the train fares are above a certain price you say "stuff getting the train at those prices. I'll get the coach instead..." or whatever. It would have been interesting. But never mind.

There was an article in The Metro(free weekday newspaper) today about that some train companies apparantly had no cheap train fares available during the Christmas period. And that they are cashing in on the Christmas travel period. This I found to be the case with First Greedy Great Western, with a journey from London Paddington-Bristol on Christmas Eve evening. Started looking at the start of November for the fares, and the cheapest they had was £22 single. By late November, the cheap fares were still not available so I booked London Waterloo-Bristol at £8.90 instead. They're not catching me out on paying premium rate train fares when I need to travel. £22 single Bristol-London?? Wooahh No thanks! I for one don't think they were making available ANY of the usual £10 and £14 single fares on Christmas Eve. And that indeed they're cashing in on the deman for travel during the Christmas period. However saying that I managed to get a £10 Bristol-London Paddington for the 27th December.

I also think First Greedy Great Western were taking advantage of the demand for travel during the dates that the Glastonbury Festival was on last year. I couldn't get any cheap fares on direct services from London Paddingon-Castle Cary and return on the necessary dates last year. They were quoting outragoues prices such as £49 single or something. There was an allmost hidden way(you would have to experiment on thetrainline or qjump in getting 2 single tickets outbound) of getting it cheaper by going Paddington-Bath Spa, then a Weymouth train from Bath Spa-Castle Cary. This was a bit more reasonably priced at around £22 single. Though there was only limited availibility of these. And I didn't snap those tickets up in time, and had to settle for going via the longer route of London Waterloo-Salisbury, Sailisbury-Westbury, and Westbury-Castle Cary with South West Trains and First Greedy Great Western instead. Including waits of about 30 minutes each at both Salisbury and Westbury for the connecting trains. Took ages longer than it would getting a direct train, but I'd rather pay a reasonable price for my train journeys and it taking ages longer than pay absolutely extortionate prices for the direct fast journeys.

Coincidentally no cheap fares were available on the direct Castle Cary-London Paddington services on the day that Glastonbury finished either. You can guess which option I went with.

Again, I think First Greedy Great Western were taking advantage of the demand for travel during Glastonbury, and were making NO cheap advance fares available for purchase.

[arabiandisco]

It's called business. Huge demand is projected, so you cash in. Just the same with Sainsburys selling turkeys - I'll bet they cost more now than they do in July...

British Rail used to do it, too. I remember doing Basingstoke - Bath one weekend for about £12, then a week later it was £18 for the same trip because it happened to be a bank holiday weekend, so don't go thinking it's all private companies lining shareholders pockets.