Rail fares.....need to remortgage!!

Train fares are mad - and you do not even get a seat sometimes. We use our senior railcard which helps a bit. No wonder there are so many cars on the roads!

I travel by train from Northumberland to Gourock on a regular basis. I find that if I book single tickets it is usually cheaper. I book well in advance and I am able to travel at any time of the day. I use my senior Railcard. The cheapest journey I have made was for £6.50 out and £8.50 home. I also have a ferry ride which is £2.50 each way. I would be scandalised if I was charged over £200 return. Am I a cheapskate or what?

They're crazy! I look for all the offers particularly the £19 return deals.

Hilda-we were travelling from North of Aberdeen to Telford/Shrewsbury changing at Edinburgh and Wolverhampton and I couldn't find it any cheaper. Flight to Birmingham is alternative and it's over £200 as well. I think we pay disproportionately more as there are less people travelling- we don't have the lines as they were done away with by that nice Dr Beeching v

I think I have already moaned about the complete illogicality of train fares. Recently I was quoted £19.85 for single back from Birmngham while if I also bought an advance single to Birmngham for the same day for £3, the return leg was only £9.85.
When DH has a hospital clinic appointment in London (about 2 per month, can be more, rarely less,)I try to pare our costs down but can't do advance fares back as timing is unpredictable.
I drive us to the station, parking is either £10 per day or £8 if I am lucky, we both have Senior Railcards but have to use Virgin trains so that I can reserve a seat as he can't stand, and our off-peak returns, with the discount are £10.50 each. Of course traveling off peak can mean we have to kick our heels in London until the first train after 7 if a late running clnic means we can't get to Euston before 4.
He has to use a taxi to get him to Hampstead, usually between £14-15 in a black cab, but bookng a minicab back brings that down to £10.
So not allowing for coffees or lunch or an early supper if we have to wait until after 7, it works out at over £55 not counting petrol to and from the station (8 miles each way) and we get home about 8.30, having left at 9.
In a way, the train fares don't seem too bad compared to all the rest of it, but there is rarely change out of £75 for each visit, money I would much rather have in my purse to spend on a weekend away once in a while!

Rail fares account for 46% of the cost of the holiday I've just had, compared with 42% for the accommodation, and 10% for the food.

The problem of complicated fares arises from the privatisation of rail services. The ridiculous sorts of situations of a return being cheaper than a single etc are a direct result of there being so many companies. It is madness.

And the other madness is that train companies are fined if a train is late - how does that help them to fund better services?

Just priced it as singles - £194 so only £13 saving. Fortunately all our trains were on time - if not arriving early - so no complaints on that front. Refreshments also available on all long distance services.

A while ago, I wanted to journey to King`s Lynn to meet up with a fellow Gransnetter. If we`d gone by car, it would have taken around 45 minutes, but going by train, I`d have had to go from Boston to Ely then back up country again to King`s Lynn, taking over 3 hours, and costing well over £30. I decided against the trip, it wasn`t worth it for a couple of hours. What doesn`t seem fair is that if you live in a major city, and want to travel to another city, fares are very cheap, yet to go half that distance from a town in between costs a fortune, the reason why I can never go to meetups in Scotland or Northumberland.

Did you have 2 disabled cards for your journey?
And are you aware of the two together railcard.
From Scotland think you must have used Virgin to Wolves on there straight through trains, it would have been cheaper with splits or even changing at Crewe for Shrewsbury.
I have travelled from Banbury to Ruabon on a split ticket day return for £26, making Birmingham the split point.
The other way is using the rover tickets.

Did you see the TV programme where a secret camera showed that new staff employed for rail companies were told not to volunteer information to customers about the cheapest fares and to only answer specific questions as to specific ways of reducing the cost? Of course, most people have no idea how much they should be paying or how they can reduce the fare and they need staff to be pro-active in giving them this information. Also it showed how different ticket machines at major stations could differ by up to £100 in the price of tickets.

Apparently, according to Christian Wolmar - a London mayoral candidate- the government pays a higher subsidy to railway companies than any other European country, even though our ticket prices are much higher than theirs. He says "In the British Rail days, the railways were, indeed, starved of public funds. But since privatisation in the mid-1990s they have been sucking up subsidy as fast as the new Pendolinos thunder through Watford Junction. Taxpayer support reached a peak of more than £6bn in 2006 and the Institute of Economic Affairs, no fan of state control, calculates that subsidy “more than tripled since the British Rail era”.

"It is the inefficiency of the railways — and the dysfunctional privatised structure — that means we have ended up with the worst of both worlds, high fares and a large subsidy."

The government plans to cut the rail subsidy and so fares will presumably be rising even further. Something needs to be done about our railway system.

It is often cheaper to split your tickets than buy one ticket for the whole journey. There is a websitehttp://www.moneysavingexpert.com/split-cheap-train-tickets/ to help with this.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/split-cheap-train-tickets/ sorry missed out a space.

I was travelling home from a Gransnet meetup when the girl in the seat behind me was found to be travelling with the wrong ticket. The guard was very nice but after 10 minutes discussion he had just about worked out what train company she should be travelling with but was still at a loss as to where she could meet up with one of them. Anyone remember the days when you just bought a ticket and got on a train?

I do indeed remember - and how simple it was.

I have posted before about being stuck in a broken down train in the Severn Tunnel for hours as we had to wait for a shunting engine from the same company to arrive. Apparently there were several engines that could have obliged, but the company was not prepared to pay.

How ridiculous. We'd just settled on our Grand Central train home from London yesterday when a dire warning came over the tannoy that tickets for any other company's trains were not valid. Two young women in our coach and travelling separately checked their tickets and immediately scrabbled for their cases and got off. Another was in conversation with a guard outside our window about which service she could use her ticket on - a previous train had been cancelled. He didn't seem sure. I just felt sorry for them all.

The trouble with the 'split the ticket' sites is that it is very complicated and I don't find they give the best deals. I tried the link for a journey that I am doing next week and not only is it more expensive than my way, but they send me through London which is unnecessary.

The problem with working it out is that you have to find out which stations you go through and keep trying different combinations. You can often stay on the same train but just have 2 or 3 tickets for it.

I have hit one snag and that is connections. I assumed that if you were late on one and missed your connection you could then use your next ticket on a later train but it was pointed out that if for example you get a Virgin train they don't have to honour it because it was a cross country train that made you late. However no one checked my ticket on Virgin so I don't know what would have happened. If you split the ticket on the same train you are OK.

e.g if you want to get from Bristol to Leeds it may be cheaper to get Bristol to Gloucester, Gloucester to Chesterfield and Chesterfield to Leeds - and yet be in the same train.
Another disadvantage is that you may have 3 seat numbers and have to move if someone is booked into your first seat later.

However it can save a lot of money - but it takes hours to work out!

one of the best rail operators I use is Chiltern, I can get an anytime return from Banbury to either Birmingham Moor Street or Snow Hill for £9.55p with rail card discount.
And Chiltern seem to be leading the way in investing in stations etc on there routes.
As to off peak, Monday to Friday travelling some operators have a time when off peak ceases.
I did a trip to Derby , but missed the train which would have been OK with my off peak ticket, I went to the ticket barrier , ticket rejected showed person the ticket, thinking he would wave me on , as I had done split tickets, I had to pay an extra £1.30p for bit to Birmingham.
I got on the Cross Country train which went through to my destination Banbury, ticket inspector/guard when asked to show ticket said why did they do that they should have let you continue , as I had to show the 2 tickets for that Brum split.
Derby is controlled by Midland Main Line.

I think it completely wrong and that it should be nice and simple to just buy a ticket at a reasonable price.
I booked my ticket weeks ago to get the price down, because it is more expensive on the day,but it is non refundable if I couldn't go for any reason.

They have definitely gone up. I always buy tickets about 2 to 3 months in advance and to London from the South Coast is usually £25 for 2 or so. Yesterday the cheapest I can find for October is £35! Haven't bought them yet as couldn't believe that was right!.

If I want to go north I can often see really cheap fares from Euston but then I find it costs me much more to get to London in the first place and it is no longer cheap!

There was someone who I know from Stockport , through my beer festival interests , he had done a thread on this specialist email site.
He mentioned when looking at fares from the Manchester area to London with Virgin had rose in away.
That the cost of visiting beer festivals in the South was now out of the question.

I agree that it takes ages to work out the cheapest prices.

Book in advance if you can. Even 2 days in advance is better that a few hours.
Around abut 8 weeks used to be best, but I am not sure that that is the case now.
Yes to splitting tickets. We have done it in 3 parts before.
Single journeys can be cheaper. but again not always.
London and the middle part of England seems to be more expensive than nearer ends of lines. So if you can avoid the middle part, it can work out cheaper!

whitewave, yes that is probably right.

Advance tickets are issued 12 weeks in advance. The ones for christmas are issued roughly end of September.

The above methods save my kids 000's of £s.

And dont forget railcards. Sometimes there are local ones as well as the normal ones.