Apologies but as I come from a country with very little rail infrastructure that simple fact of having options on rail travel confuses me !

I’m going to be in London for work in a couple of weeks, i need to go to Edinburgh for a few days and thought that as I am near euston and kings x it might be more pleasureable to go by train. I assumed booking through trainline.com is the best way but any advice greatly received.

I use trainline. Wife just told me about a couples rail card which saves 30% if you travel off peak. Might be worth a look if you aren’t travelling alone

Use trainline to find your route and operators but use the operators’ website direct to book (or at least have a look). Might at least save you the booking fee.

The other thing you might try is breaking your booking into two or more segments (say London-York then York-Edinburgh). Even if you stay on the same train it might work out cheaper.

as someone that does the edinburgh – london jaunt fairly frequently, I use eastcoast.co.uk once you register, you can rack up the loyalty points and there are no booking fees.

Oh and its probably worth looking at flights if cost is a concern, I can often fly including the train costs at both ends than take the train. Little Red (Virgin) into LHR is pretty good.

Thanks all. Cost isn’t really the driver, i was trying to avoid flying as in the 3 days before I’ll have just flown from NZ so wanted to have a slightly more relaxing and less airport centric journey ! I would have thought getting from town to LHR, check-in, wait, fly etc there wouldn’t be much in it time wise ?

Redspotted Hankey is the one we use for rail tickets. It helps with the split ticketing too. A lack of booking fees helps too.

I would have thought getting from town to LHR, check-in, wait, fly etc there wouldn’t be much in it time wise ?

The fastest train between Waverley and kings cross takes just over 4 hrs.
Flight is a nominal 1hr, but there are usually delays going into lhr due to traffic.
Allow 1.5 to get from centre of Edinburgh to take off and 45 mins from lhr into town and there isn’t that much in it.

A lot depends on where in London you need to be and what time you are travelling.
The 1st class service on east coast is pleasant and if you can stick to your trains then the advance restricted tickets make it quite reasonable.

I always use the East Coast website

Not necessarily applicable if work are paying, but if you have an Amazon account you can get £8 off tickets from RedSpottedHanky via this link, with no booking fee. I also wouldn’t book with Trainline because of the extra booking fee that the train operators themselves are not allowed to charge. “Advance” tickets will be cheaper when booked ahead but are only valid on the booked service, so an open return might be better.

Note that there are planned engineering works around the Easter weeks.