Cycling UK Forum

trieste wrote:Stockport-Birmingham, Birmingham-Penzance is cheaper at £48.50.

It's best to buy 12 weeks in advance - http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/44703.aspx

Just tried it on the link and the cheapest I could get was £140.00

Stockport to Birmingham £10.00
Birmingham to Penzance £130.00 +

You can get £40+ tickets from Birmingham to Penzance up to about 10th January. Advance tickets have not yet been released for dates after that (12 weeks...). £130+ is the standard single fare.

You can set up an email prompt for when those cheap tickets are released for your travel date:

http://www.thetrainline.com/ticketalert/

Karen Sutton wrote:Using eastcoast you can book your bike space with your tickets. I always use them.

+1 for east coast

at long last the reply from Cross country

"Thank you for your patience.

I have spoken with the revenue department and have found the reason for the big difference in price of the tickets.

The two tickets you are comparing are different ticket types, they are not like for like. One is a walk up fare and the other is an advanced ticket which is a cheaper priced but because of this holds a lot of restrictions.

However, your question has highlighted a fault with the National Rail Enquires website when showing different fares. This has been raised and will hopefully be rectified soon.

Thank you so much for your email. I hope I have managed to explain things for you, if not or you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me."

As we used to say " Further enquires will be made"

Whilst I have no reason to doubt the response, I have no evidence I knew I should have printed off the web pages. too late now

Malc

ferrit worrier wrote:

trieste wrote:Stockport-Birmingham, Birmingham-Penzance is cheaper at £48.50.

It's best to buy 12 weeks in advance - http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/44703.aspx

Just tried it on the link and the cheapest I could get was £140.00

Stockport to Birmingham £10.00
Birmingham to Penzance £130.00 +

Try spliting the Birmingham to Penzance fare at Exeter. Then search for Exeter to Penzance or Exeter to Plymouth then Plymouth to Penzance trying to stay on the same train. There are several split points on the network and Devon and Cornwall is an area that works with split ticketing from Birmingham if you can idenitfy the fare split point.

Try Birmingham to Cheltenham. Cheltenham to Exeter. Exeter to Penzance.

If you intend to do several train journeys over a set period of time, say a week or a month, there may be 'season tickets' that will allow you to do several journeys much cheaper. You need a railcard with photo, available at stations, to be able to buy a season ticket.
I had to go to London several times in the same week and got a season ticket for £317.00 and could go from Stoke to London and back as many times as I liked all week...whereas an open return would cost £254.00 for just one day!
Might be worth asking at Stockport or Manchester for this option.

RickH wrote:Yes - the fare structures are crazy with all sorts of anomalies!

Absolutely. Just try with a few local journeys on routes you are familiar with. Two separate tickets can be cheaper than one for the combined journey.
The pricing system is a complete mess. The problem is it takes a lot of searching to find the cheapest.

I always split Carlise to Manchester via Preston. It saves me roughly £17 on a day
return. Mad, but true!

Usually if you can leave a few stops up the line from a mainline city station
you can also save up to £10-20 on a return journey. Sometimes even one local station further on from the
Mainline station is enough to get quite a substantial saving.

I went on holiday to Skye during the summer. A return Glasgow Queen Street to
Mallaig was £58.00. But one five minute ride to Exhibition Centre station,
a mile further north and it was only £49.10! And these for one month open returns.

My grandad was a railwayman for 45 years. I think if he were alive to read all this he'd think we were completely mad. What the hell has gone wrong with the English that we will put up with this nonsense?

We have a friend of Dutch extraction. His mum still lives in Holland.

He says that the Dutch system on the railways is to charge by the Km. One charge per Km. The further you go, the more it costs. Dead simple.

Mick F wrote:We have a friend of Dutch extraction. His mum still lives in Holland.

He says that the Dutch system on the railways is to charge by the Km. One charge per Km. The further you go, the more it costs. Dead simple.

Same as Japan I think, although they have different rates for different speed trains...

Carlisle to Birmingham, 185 miles: £ 77 one way

Paris to Tours, 178 miles: €29 one way

Something very far wrong with train ticket prices in the UK

And that's on the TGV: 230mph. Journey time we'll under an hour.

Exeter is an unusual destination from london. There are two routes there but only one is covered by a network railcard. At 1/3rd off its a useful alternative to the main line.

In a similar vein some major destinations attract super off peak returns. If they lie on your route breaking the tickets there can save money over one ticket fro the whole route. The train has to stop at the intermediate point.

Yes there are lots of wrinkles but the world isn't a uniform place. Shifting people onto quieter trains / routes etc makes plenty of sense to me even if it throws up odd fares in unusual combinations.