The Dark Art of Buying Train Tickets

I just bought tickets for my daughter to travel Edinburgh to Kings Cross next week. On Trainline they were coming in at nearly £200. On LNER £180. On Lumo £150. All the same trains traveling at the same time.

As I was about to book (on Lumo) I thought it would be easier to get her Tweedbank – Edinburgh train at the same time so all on one ticket. This is a £10 journey for a child. So amended the Lumo booking at add the extra journey, it brought the price down by £50. So total ticket cost was £100.

How is that even possible, why have they built such ridiculous systems?

I completely share your pain. I went through a similar process last year, and previous years for the same ed-ldn route. When I went to my station to collect the tickets, the guy looked at my journey and said I should have come to him, got a cheaper journey by going via Peterborough FFS

It’s ridiculous.

Because the whole system has been split up and subdivided many times and is now run for profit by several companies who hold franchises for a limited number of years. These franchises make huge profits but do very little beyond their minimum commitments to improve things. This also means that fares are ridiculously over complicated and vary massively.

Most of these companies are foreign owned and are in part owned by the governments of the countries where they are based. This means that the train operating companies are actually partly state owned – just not by this state! Other countries profit from your fares. The money that should be used to improve services and lower costs to passengers is going to share holders and not being reinvested into what is a vital service.

Surprisingly, the best value is actually to go to a ticket office and buy – the people there are often experts at finding loopholes, offering best value and so on. Ticket machines are heavily biased towards the company that installed them, apps and websites likewise. It gets worse with sites like Trainline which add an admin fee to cover their own costs. You’re buying a ticket from them for £2 more than you’d pay on the train company app!

If you book between 7 and 21 days in advance and are fairly flexible about when you’re travelling, Avanti do a special offer thing called Superfare. Fixed price on certain routes, just select the route and tell it whether you want to travel in Morning, Afternoon or Evening and it’ll send you the train info 24hrs in advance.

So for example London – Manchester (or vice versa) is £20. Any time of day. The only “catch” is that if you tell it you want a morning train, it could be any train between 07.00 and 11.59 and you don’t get choice of seats. You get an email 24hrs before you travel saying “you’re on the xxxx train in seat B21”

Obviously though that’s no use on an Edinburgh to KX route! Although you could do Glasgow to Euston for £30.
https://www.avantisuperfare.co.uk/

But yeah, the whole system is a mess and none of the train companies have the slightest incentive to sort any of it out. Quite the opposite in fact!

I rarely use trains but a friend showed my that when you use the ticket machines in stations that if your destination is one of the common ones say it might charge you £5 for your ticket, now if you search for that exact same place instead it’ll charge you £4

The prices are just examples but id love to know if its a big saving on a longer trip or if if its the same saving regardless of price.

Surprisingly, the best value is actually to go to a ticket office and buy – the people there are often experts at finding loopholes, offering best value and so on

Not in my experience. Best fare for me is using a split ticketing website like https://splitticketing.com/whitelabel/book.html. This gets my Brighton to London peak time return down from £57.80 to £36.50. The ticket office peeps don’t do split tickets.

My son recently missed his train home from London. The ticket was for a specific train. It was going to cost £100 to change the ticket or £35 for a new ticket for the next train……

Avanti superfares are fab, I ve booked a few.  About 50% of my prebooked journeys are refunded as either late or cancelled.  I then get on the next available train or bus.

Both local operators are govt owned, must be costing the taxpayer a fortune.

“Because the whole system has been split up and subdivided many times and is now run for profit by several companies who hold franchises for a limited number of years. These franchises make huge profits but do very little beyond their minimum commitments to improve things. This also means that fares are ridiculously over complicated and vary massively.
Most of these companies are foreign owned ….. “

Been reading the Morning Post recently?
There are no franchises now. There have been no huge profits for at least 10 years, and since covid, the subsidy has risen massively.
All Train Operating Companies are run by the Government (apart from the open access and freight companies, like Lumo, Grand Central) etc in an arms length deal with the Dept. for Transport. There are still private companies doing the day to day administrative duties, but all of those duties are directed by the DfT in everything they do. How many trains are run, when the trains run, how many coaches they run, how many stations they can stop at, how much they charge. The DfT controls it all.

Yes, thats right, the Trains ARE nationalised already. Dont believe the newspapers about massive profits. There arent any, and even 10 years ago few did make any money when there were private companies running trains. They dont tell you about the massive losses that some made, or why the most used, and should be, most profitable route,the ECML from London to Edinburgh went bust three times in 11 years.
Even Labour are on the bandwagon, saying they will nationalie the trains. Thats difficult when the DfT own the franchise!
The private companies are the public face showing on the trains. These are paid a set fee payment, for running the trains, by supplying drivers/guards/staff/management and trains. All bills are paid by the DfT, any ticket income is paid to the DfT. The private company is just an administrative body, which if sacked, would need to employ just as many people to do the exact same duties they are doing now.
The DfT has total control over the railways, yes, thats the Government, private enterprise has nothing to do with running the railways. They are doing an awful job, so it would be better under private ownership. Why are Transpennine trains packed? Because the DfT told them to withdraw 13 5yo trains last December. Thats around 60 services a day gone, just on one route. Its happening all over the Country. Why are the Drivers striking? Because the DfT wont allow the admin teams to negotiate with them, so they carry on striking. The (true) private Companies, freight, and open access, settled with the Drivers 2 years ago, as they are not controlled by the DfT, so their trains run when others are on strike. Blame the government when a train doesnt run, it isnt the name on the side of the train that is causing the problems.

Split ticketing on Trainline app for the win on prices.
Add in Seatfrog for occasional first class treat, although none match Virgin first class back in the day.

Although ticket price variations are frustrating, the biggest issue remains reliability of the service.

My Euston to Dunblane trip last night started with 3 trains worth of people squeezing on, making the journey until Penrith feel like the tube with people standing.
Then ScotRail cancelled the only/last to get home from Glasgow.
So mrs_oab drove nearly an hour each way to pick myself and another stranded passenger up and take us home.
FFS

It’s completely mad. Asking the ticket office people at mainline train stations is preferable but not always practical.

My favourite is when you book a ticket and Trainline then suggests it is cheaper to get these forty different tickets instead. The whole thing is an utter **** shambles!

“Then ScotRail cancelled the only/last to get home from Glasgow.
So mrs_oab drove nearly an hour each way to pick myself and another stranded passenger up and take us home.”

They have a duty to get you to your destination. If the last train is cancelled, then they usually arrange a taxi, or, if lots of people, a bus. Of course, getting a bus would be pretty difficult to get without unacceptable delay, but a taxi from Glasgow is easily arranged by the Scotrail Staff. You should get a full refund for you return journey, so long as the return leg was booked as one journey. (oh, and thats another farce, buy tickets through scotrail, use an Avanti train which is delayed, and you have to claim from Avanti, and open another account with them to be able to claim the fare).

They have a duty to get you to your destination

A few years ago 6 of us were travelling London to  Scotland on the sleeper and we woke up the next morning to find the service had terminated in Preston. Cal Sleeper arranged 3 large taxis to take us all, plus bikes,  from Preston to Ardrossan – must have cost them packet.

They have a duty to get you to your destination

Twice before I’ve found myself at nearing midnight with no trains, station staff saying they cannot get a bus or a manager on phone, and any helpline number ringing out. There’s no offer of a taxi made. So third time was ‘fekkit, I’ll get myself home’.

And let’s not forget that I’m currently on 60% cancellation of the morning trains to either Glasgow or Edinburgh I’ve tried to get since the start of the year at Dunblane currently. If there’s any delays, the train just doesn’t run to BofA or Dunblane on a morning.

Zero trust in ScotRail when shit goes down I’m afraid.

@matt_outandabout

Never heard of Seatfrog, how does it work?

We’re off to see eldest tomorrow for the day in London so have already bought tickets but I’m interested in being treated to a 1st class upgrade at a sensible price!

Do I need to cancel our existing tickets which we bought a couple of days ago?

Split ticketing gets iffy when there are changes as the services are unreliable and there have been more than a few times I’ve had to get later trains because I’ve been delayed. Split tickets would have left me stuck.

Train tickets are based on demand based pricing.  So if loads of people want to go from London to Edinburgh, then the price goes up. But if want to go to some rarely used station just outside Edinburgh, it can be cheaper.  But as you can “break” your journey.if you’re an anything but an advance ticket (ie for a specific train) then you can just walk out the front door at Edinburgh.

This is when split tickets can be cheaper. Ie derby-york is about £120, but derby-sheffield-,York is about £70.

But yes, the whole system is a total mess, and the cost outrageous.

Split tickets are tricky with a bike too.

Aren’t ticket prices down to Govt reducing subsidies 1% pa?

“There’s no offer of a taxi made. So third time was ‘fekkit, I’ll get myself home’.”

Keep the taxi receipt, and they pay it.
Dunblane sounds like Lockerbie. TPX and occasional Avanti trains are the only ones that call there, the 9.33 got the distinction of the most cancelled train in December, cant remember now, either Manchester or Liverpool to Glasgow. Usually booked down as ‘fault with train’, but the real reason was lack of Staff to run the train. Luckily the reduced peak fares came in, so after being let down 3 times, we started to get the 8.14 Avanti service,at the off peak fare, which is a lot more reliable.
Read my other post about the trains Companies, TPX are woefully under resourced, so struggle to run a full service when all staff are well, add in a few sickies, and they cannot run many trains. Scotrail is wholly Scottish Government controlled, complain to them, not that it’ll do any good.
Locally, the lack of Government intervention in the poor running of trains is put down to D&G being a staunch Tory area and not in the central belt, so the Holyrood SNP are not bothered.
What may help you, a little, next year a new service from Stirling, run by Grand Central, to Euston direct, starts.4 return trains a day. Set prices in advance, probably a bit cheaper than the Scotrail fare.

There should be 3 variables only:

location

distance

time

Sorted.

I agree finephilly, sadly it’s ‘oooh, market = silly high and silly low’.

Do I need to cancel our existing tickets which we bought a couple of days ago?

No you don’t. You can search for your journey, then if your bid is successful you get a separate Seatfrog ticket that covers the upgrade and has to be shown with the original ticket.  Just download the Seatfrog app and search for your train.

Cheers @J-R I’ll try it

I’ve never had Seatfrog actually offer me a deal.

LNER is running about 40% so delayed that I get 50-100% of my money back on approx 20 trips up the ECML in the last year

the best value is actually to go to a ticket office and buy

No longer true I’m afraid. Plenty of routes where the cheapest tickets are app/online only now; they changed the rules.

shame that its such a clusterf*ck really as we’d use the train a lot more if we could make sense of it.  as we often get the odd couple of days off work together midweek, we’d love to be able to just have an option to put in the dates, and ‘give me the cheapest options to go anywhere’ and let us visit places we’d never think of going, just for the experience.

I’d happily use the train to go to London or Bristol for a concert, if going on my own, but train times make it absolutely impossible. The last train from London Paddington at night is 11.28/23.28. Fine. Concerts inevitably end at 23.00, then you have to get out of the venue, onto the station then catch the next train. The journey from, for example the O2 Arena or The Roundhouse is about 25 minutes.
I shouldn’t have to point out the problem – a five minute window, which just isn’t possible, unless you’re prepared to leave a concert fifteen-twenty minutes before the show ends.

It’s even worse with Bristol, the closest venues to Temple Meads are about a thirty minutes walk, but the last train east is 10.32/22.32, about half an hour before the show ends!
What possible reason is there for not having a last train at 11.59/23.59?
If you miss the last train from London heading west, it’s a nine hour wait until the next one, and it’s £100 for the ticket.

Next time, instead of driving into London and using a JustPark in Hammersmith, costing about £23 for parking from noon to midnight, I’m going to use a 24-hour car park in Reading for £15, and catch the Elizabeth Line train, which will take me pretty much all the way to the O2, with one change near the end – the last LizzyLine train is nearly midnight, and I’ll have around thirty-forty miles less to drive home from Reading.

Public transport is basically a clusterphûq.

I’ve looked at on the day train tickets between Stroud & Paddington before and they’ve always been around £150 but managed to buy for £35 at peak travel time last week which was nice.

On a different but same:
I needed to hire a van this weekend, usual place was £70 but I left it too late and they’d all gone same as all the other local van hire places, I phoned Enterprise whose call centre quoted £170, I popped into their local hire centre and the girl there got it down to £150 for me, i said its too much as other places are only charging £70 so the guy says he’ll do it for £65. Sold! But WTF.

Can someone explain split ticketing, how does that work?

You’re travelling from A to C.

It is sometimes cheaper to book an advanced ticket from from A to B, plus another ticket from B to C.

Zero trust in ScotRail when shit goes down I’m afraid.

You’ve just reminded me of “Beast from the East” Scotrail determined it wasnt safe to let passengers off at an intermediary station and instead called it as “only safe” to dump passengers 6.2 miles away, in a genuine sub zero gale force blizzard, with all roads closed, regardless of physical ability to walk 6 miles even on a good day.

There was obviously no duty of care taken to arrange alternative transport, as there wasnt any alternative transport they could arrange, you certainly wasnt driving it in your own car. People were literally being picked up walking back by farmers in tractors and one guy with a Uni Mog.

Thanks Kelvin

There are multiple reasons for “past trains” running when they do.

The train has to be returned to its depot for service before going out again the next day. Different depots service different rolling stock so they have onward travel to do after reaching their destination.

“Engineering works” for the inspection. Repair and maintenance of all the infrastructure that enables the railway to operate.  From tracks, sleepers and ballast to bridges, signals, power lines, points, drainage, tunnels, earthworks, vegetation all need regular works that can often only be carried out when trains aren’t running.  So that’s between that last train at 110m, and the first one at 5am, plus the travel time to/from depots. On busy lines you get about hours of track access on a Saturday night. And about 30min in the week…

Timetables are horrendously complicated.  Historically they primary served freight and commuting patterns. The new usage pattern for the railways ( e less peaky, flatter usage by the public,) hasn’t yet been integrated with demand, rolling stock (short or long trains) capacity etc etc.

It’s logistics. And on a complex,ultimate discipline,multi operator system appeasing everyone is nigh on impossible.  Unless we tarmac the lot ..

Sorry, loads of typos in my last post. The perils of posting from a phone!

I was talking about *last* trains, and *multi discipline* engineering works.

@sadexpunk Since you say “we”, have you got a Two Together Railcard? It won’t fix the broken, illogical and expensive ticketing system, but it does give you a significant saving. Me and Mrs TNW generally buy one when we’re doing a journey that pays for it in one go, and then we have it for the rest of the year anyway.

How is that even possible, why have they built such ridiculous systems?

It used to be much cheaper for me to book Stirling – London with LNER and then get on and off at York. Someone (here maybe?) did point out that it was illegal, but I think that if you had such a stupid ticketing system your company deserved it. Although maybe the Scottish government was subsidising the journeys?

“It used to be much cheaper for me to book Stirling – London with LNER and then get on and off at York. Someone (here maybe?) did point out that it was illegal, but I think that if you had such a stupid ticketing system your company deserved it. Although maybe the Scottish government was subsidising the journeys?”

No need to get off, so long as the train stops at where the ticket is split, then it is fine. Scotrail does not subsidise LNER fares.
Scotrail fares are, generally, a little bit cheaper than comparable journeys in England. Not by much, and I dont think it is a recent thing, it was thought when the fares were concocted that Scotland needed a slightly lower per mile fare, as people in remote places relied on trains, and it has carried on since. And, vice versa, commuters into some large English cities have always paid more per mile than other routes, they are a captive market, with few viable alternative transport routes, but they benefit from an intensive service rather than the 4 trains a day of some Highland towns.
What has changed in the last 9 months is that Scotrail no longer has a peak fare, which makes travel before 9.30am and after 4pm until 6pm more affordable. The experiment is due to end at the end of September, it was originally for 6 months to see how it improved passenger numbers, and has been extended by 3 months twice, so, hopefully, they will have enough data to see if it is revenue neutral, if so, the peak fares will be scrapped.
The ticketing system is a mess, and a lot of it comes from the 1948 Nationalisation. Yes, there are still ticketing rules in effect now that were brought in in 1948. Having a set price per mile woudlnt work, 2 million people a day would pay £1/mile into London, at £5 each, then 50 people want to go to Inverness from London, so pays £450, the commuter trains make a lot (no longer true after covid), the long distance train loses money, even though passengers are paying the same per mile cost.
It’s a service, do you subsidise it, or let everyone pay the full costs of the network? This goes back to Beeching in the 60’s, the thinking then was to shut all the quiet lines, and keep the busy ones, which, economicaly, is the correct thing to do, but, people see it as a public service, so subsidy from the government is required if we are to keep the current network.Full cost would double or triple fares, then less people would use it, so fares would need to got up, and it gets to the stage where lines cannot run, as no one uses them, as they cannot afford it.

The current system isnt too bad , but you do need a bit of research before buying. Where it falls down is longer journeys when you want to travel that day. If you booked a few days in advance, the ticket would likely be half the cost, but the usual headlines of £300 from London to Manchester can be true, but few actually pay that fare. I’ve just checked, today, Saturday, its £76.30 single, on Monday morning before 9am its £184, but it’s £47.50 at 10.53. Like all things, you need to shop around, if you’re a bit flexible in times, it can be had at a reasonable price.

@sadexpunk Since you say “we”, have you got a Two Together Railcard? It won’t fix the broken, illogical and expensive ticketing system, but it does give you a significant saving. Me and Mrs TNW generally buy one when we’re doing a journey that pays for it in one go, and then we have it for the rest of the year anyway.

we dont no, so thanks for the heads up.   catch 22 tho, we’d buy one if we did go on a trip, but we dont even look now because theres no option to book a date/time/station and ‘whats the cheapest place to go option’ when we have a few days off together and fancy seeing somewhere new, have a few beers, and then train it back.

thanks for the info tho.

It’s quite simple really.

It is EXACTLY what people voted for in May 1992 when they elected a Conservative majority Government led by John Major.  They offered privatisation as a key manifesto promise, and people got the privatisation they voted for.

The government of that time had hoped it would die a death in the private world, and they could wash their hands saying ‘not our fault and we can’t change it as it’s not a Government owned thing. As only plebs and drones use public transport.

By the way. Lumo is NOT the same as LNER. it’s an open access operator.  Saying they are the same is like saying Virgin Atlantic and British Airways are the same.  You  can’t use a Virgin plane ticket on a BA flight !

Oh and BTW, the Sunak Gov  backtracked on its promise for a single country wide ticket purchase app that gets you the cheapest ticket.

No doubt influenced by the people who make £££ from TrainLine etc putting £££ into Tory coffers to keep their gravy train running.

Meanwhile in Germany you can get a year long go-anywhere-in-Germany-all-year ticket for about £4k, 2nd class).  Whilst just a Reading-London 2nd class ST costs £5.6k.

People voted for this stupidity.