Travelling from London to Birmingham by train (return) = over £120!

[jarjarsinks]

My husband and I want to go to an exhibition in Birmingham (we live in London). I thought we could go by train but it seems it would cost us over £120 (£30 per person each way) to go there. It's therefore not really worth it to wander around an exhibition for one hour.

Am I doing this wrong or is this really what the cost of train travel in this country is!? I mean, I know travel in London is not cheap but I expected the tickets to be about £15 each (return at most). Birmingham isn't even that far away. It's cheaper to fly to Spain!

If you're willing to go on a Saturday then Chiltern Railways have cheaper options (buying two singles rather than a return). Have a play around with the dates that work for you?

Saturday 14th September

m.nationalrail.co.uk/pj/plan/Birmingham/London/140919/1050/dep

I would always book on the TOC's own website, but national rail is a good place to search to find out who and where and cost before you look further

Just realised I searched the wrong way, but you get the idea!

£60 per person return is, I presume, a flexible ticket. You need advance tickets or off-peak returns. It costs approx £30 return from Euston to Birmingham if you plan.

You book in advance for deals, I can go from crewe to bham for £50 return, but if I check the deals and have specific trains then I can get £7 each way, same as if I go from Manchester to Leeds - around £50 return or can find tickets for £3.5 each way. I have got crewe to London return in off peak for £15 each way before now.

2 adults for just over 30 next Saturday?

I get the bus to London now. It was £55 for a single to London last week or £11.50 national express

If either of you has a season ticket and a gold card, you can buy a 2 together railcard for £10, which will reduce the price of the train tickets by a third.

@NoBaggyPants

I meant it's on board service, not the time keeping. Sorry I should have made that clear. It may still technically be a limited company but it's owned by the DfT.

From where I am, a peak time one day travel card to London (weekday, travelling before 10am) is three times the price of a weekend, off-peak ticket with a Network Railcard (which probably wouldn't cover most of the journey from Birmingham.) So I tend to go and see exhibitions at the weekend and only travel at peak time if it's going to be for work on expenses.

Rail ticket pricing in this country is a dark art, with many variables, including route, time of day, how far in advance and probably other mysterious factors.

It hasn't worked on the east coast. Fares are higher than ever and the service is poor.

It didn’t work back in the day either. So many people seem to have forgotten (or never knew) the British Rail experience!

Also, which exhibition? (Not that it's relevant to train pricing.)

British Rail was a f*k of a lot better than the sh*show we have now.

I found tickets from Birmingham to London return for £12 yesterday for my mum. Sometimes the time you travel makes a huge difference to the cost.

I've done this journey a lot of times and used to pay around £7.50 on Virgin when booked in advance. It depends on the site you use. If you just turn up on the day for an open return it will be more expensive. You can go on the slow train (Chiltern/London Midland - might have changed) but to me it wasn't worth it as pre-booking onto an exact Virgin train was so cheap.

As others have said, you need to book well in advance and pick an off peak train. The more in advance you book the cheaper it is. Buying a ticket at the train station is always extortionate