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Holidays
Why is it so expensive to go by train to London?
Hulababy · 23/01/2004 17:29
DH, myself and 21mo DD are planning on going to stay with friends at the beginning of March. They live right near the centre so we don't want to have to take the car with us. But it is so expensive to go by train. I have been on thetrainline.com and had a look and the cheapest return ticket I can get is £98 each so far - I can't really justify paying out nearly £200 for train travel!
Is there any cheaper way of getting return train tickets to London? We are going for Friday 5th to Sunday 7th March, but are happy to travel on Thursday night (after 5pm) if necessary.
Can anyone help?
JanH · 23/01/2004 19:48
It does show £98, as a First Class return - is that what you asked for???
Oh - hang on - you actually wanted Sheffiled, did you? I'll have another look!
JanH · 23/01/2004 19:54
It is cheaper from Doncaster - this page has the Sheffield fares and the cheapest is an Apex return at £58.
I only put in the Thursday evening details, try Friday and see what comes up!
JanH · 23/01/2004 20:00
Sorry - the link won't work - it was on my login or something.
Anyway go to www.gnertickets.co.uk and put in Doncaster-London with the times you want (I put Thurs evening c 6.30pm).
You do have to register at some point but they are v good - recommended!
suzywong · 23/01/2004 20:05
Serioulsy Hula, if you can't find a good rail deal, I live in easy access of M1 and north circular and on bus routes in to the West End and the City and 10 minutes from zone 2 Northern Line station in a quiet cul-de-sac bulging with posh cars (apart from my E reg volvo estate with the nappies and cheese strings wrappers in the back)
nearlyfour · 23/01/2004 20:13
Hulababy, got a family travelcard last year (recommended by BR or whatever they are called now, and after telling them the age of my dd) and my dd was three at the time, so I think you could still get it and get discounts for you and dh. You then would either have your dd(?) on your lap if the train was busy, or prebook a reduced seat for her when booking yours. Worth checking out again, perhaps. I know it saved us a fortune.
Hope this makes sense, think I may have rambled there a bit. If you want me to clarify further, let me know.
JanH · 23/01/2004 20:38
me again, HB! Have been faffing around and discovered 2 things:
- the really really cheap fares aren't available
- all the fares quoted are for 2 adults, not 1. So the more expensive fares which still are available are still quite cheap! So you could leave Sheffield at c 10.30am, and arrive in London at c. 12.45pm, for £49 each - £98 altogether!
Cecilia · 23/01/2004 20:44
I recently tried getting cheap tickets for myself, dh, dd and baby dd on thetrainline.com and found it v unhelpful. From Stoke to London it was over £200 for all of us even with savers. I rang up train enquiries instead and was recommended to buy 2 singles for all of us rather than returns. It then worked out at £60 for the lot of us. This is with Virgin trains - don't know whether this approach applies to other train companies. HTH
SofiaAmes · 23/01/2004 21:42
Hulababy, you are welcome to come and park on our drive. We are in west london. But otherwise, I took a tube ride into london with my kiddies on wednesday for the first time in years and the man behind the counter told me to buy a family card. I said that my kids were under 5 so shouldn't they be travelling for free and he said yes, but it would still be cheaper for me to buy a family card. I bet it's the same deal with the trains.
kmg1 · 23/01/2004 22:04
Hula - you are definitely allowed to buy a family railcard, even if you only have U5s. The railcard allows either or both named cardholders 1/3 off most fares, plus up to 4 (I think) children get a reduced fare too. You must have a child travelling with you to use it, and if the child is U5 that's OK. (But you do have to buy them a ticket.) OK?
Re prices - it's a real pain, and can take a lot of searching to track down the cheap fares. Generally there are fewer (or no) cheap fares on a Friday - so Thursday might be a better bet.
kmg1 · 23/01/2004 22:22
Standard saver return from Doncaster (with family railcard) costs £85.80 in total for all three of you. (available most trains on Thurs or Fri - but not the very early or very late ones on Friday).
There don't seem to be any bargain fares about atm, but keep checking - sometimes they suddenly bang some on fairly last minute. The standard saver return quoted above you don't need to book way in advance, and is not subject to availability [just not valid on certain trains] (24 hrs to get a reservation I think). So there's no advantage in booking that fare now IYSWIM.
SueW · 23/01/2004 23:35
Don;t use a website - go to your local station and talk to them is my experience! They will sort you out with a railcard and cheaper prices than the websites.
Hulababy · 24/01/2004 11:10
Thanks everyone - knew MN would help Going to check through all these later on, and going to go into the station later too.
I can't understand why the websites won't let me order an Apex - maybe they are only available through stations?
GillW · 24/01/2004 19:04
I've just been looking at Midland MainLine who run trains from Sheffield into London and they seem to be saying you could do it for £15 each (the link goes to the offer details) if you choose the right trains. Might be worth you checking with them which trains it is available on!
Hulababy · 24/01/2004 21:52
Thanks GillW. The website isn't letting me select a Sunday train so we are going to go into the station tomorrow and ask about it there. Fingers crossed...
SueW · 24/01/2004 22:16
It might be that there are planned engineering works - a friend ran into this problem for October half term. She was trying to book early to get a good deal but when she rang, they said they had no train times available, did not know when they would have them and she would just have to keep trying
Hulababy · 25/01/2004 19:39
Didn't get to go - held up elsewhere. Going to hopefully go over tomorrow now.
Hulababy · 30/01/2004 10:38
Just realsied I am an idiot The price quotes on trainline is the total cost not per ticket! Still struggling with a subnday return ticket online though so going to phone up or call in Monday.
Hulababy · 27/02/2004 11:16
Update time
We have JUST been able to book tickets for travel next weekend to London. We were unable to book anything for coming home on the Sunday unless we were prpared to pay nearly £80 each. So we held out and it has paid off. Phones Midland Mainline yesterday and got a special offer deal - £15 return each. infact deal was so good we upgraded to first class, with seat reservations. So altogether it will eb costing us £52 return for DH, me and 22mo DD to go to London for the weekend. We couldn't get there and back on thhat little amount of petrol so really pleased
tallulah · 27/02/2004 18:58
can I add a major GRRRR. I took DS1 to London on Wednesday for an interview. Because we had to be there by 10 am (interview at 10.45 in an unfamiliar district requiring 2 changes of Tube) we had to buy the full priced commuters tickets at £30 each. The train we'd gone for (8.15) & the following one were both delayed & we were directed onto the 8.41. The first announcement said "welcome to the first Cheap Day train of the day". I am STEAMING!!!!!!
I am going to complain but I don't know who to & I doubt it'll get me anywhere.
Our train home was "retimed" 6 minutes before it was due to arrive, & combined with another train, so we had to stand for half of the journey. There were so many standees I didn't think we'd actually get on- at 11pm! Then we got home after midnight, so our taxi fare was double.
Had I taken the car it would have cost a fraction of that, even with the Congestion charge & parking, and we would have been comfortable. What incentive is there to use public transport? I won't be doing it again.
(we live in Ashford, Kent, so London is all of about 50 miles away!)
roisin · 27/02/2004 19:15
Great news for you Hula ... it's just a shame that the fares are so unpredictable, and the fare system so undecipherable isn't it?
Sorry to hear about your nightmare day Tallulah
charliecat · 28/02/2004 13:09
Tallulah, you should find out where to complain to you might have some luck getting somesort of refund. its worth a try. I had the same sort of thing meeting a friend off a bus, the bus was late and id paid 22 quid for a ticket and i could have paid 7.50 if id have knew the bus would be later. My train WAS on time though. Well done Hulababy
fairydust · 28/02/2004 13:13
sorry realised you brought a full priced ticket.
When you purchased the ticket did you ask for an unrestricted on times ticket?
A full prices ticket allows you to be able to travel on any train at any time.
A cheap day return ticket has restrictions.
Before you contact South east train (i persume this is the carrier?) you need to contact National rail enquires 08457 48 49 50 and find out what time the cheap day return ticket is valid from.
If it's the 8.41 you then i'd say you would get a refund of the difference minus £5.00 admin charge that all carriers charge - you will need to have the tickets still to show prove this though you can do this by contacting (make a copy of any tickts u send off they DO tend to go missing)
South Eastern Customer Services
PO Box 125
Tonbridge
Kent
TN9 2ZA
Tel: 08706 03 04 05
Fax: 0870 6 03 05 05
Minicom: 01233 617 621
HTH it's a while since i dealt with rail enquires
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