What are your best tips and ideas for great days out by train with the family? Share to win a £250 John Lewis voucher, courtesy of Great Northern and Thameslink.

[RebeccaEMumsnet]

We have been asked by the team at Thameslink and Great Northern to find out your top tips for great days out with the children on the train, your tips on travelling by train with children and how to keep the kids entertained on the rail journeys.

Here’s what they have to say:
"Family days out create lasting memories but can sometimes be costly! To help combat this, did you know that you can get 2FOR1 tickets on certain attractions around London, Brighton and Cambridge when you travel there by rail with Thameslink and Great Northern?

Thameslink operates train services to and from the heart of London, between Bedford and Brighton via Luton and Gatwick Airport, and St Albans and Wimbledon.

Great Northern connects King’s Lynn, Cambridge and Peterborough, via Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City with London King’s Cross. Metro services run to and from Moorgate weekdays, late evening and at weekends.

^Kids travel for just £2 when accompanied by an adult on our great value Off-Peak tickets, plus get 2FOR1 offers to heaps of attractions when you travel by train: thameslinkrailway.com/spring^

We'd love to hear how you manage to have your own great day out using the train with your family."

Please share on this thread your top train tips for all thing family - whatever it is that you do, Thameslink and Great Northern want to know*.

Everyone who posts on this thread will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £250 John Lewis voucher.

You can find out more about the Great Northern and Thameslink 2FOR1 promotion here

Thanks,

MNHQ

*Standard Insight T&Cs Apply

Always book seats, preferably table ones with plugs. My 3 youngest love the train and we quite often travel into city centres that way rather than by car.

1)Make the kids responsible for their own little backpack, - include top trumps/colouring books/snacks. Travel games like mini guess who are great for slightly longer journeys.
2) Avoid rush hour, commuters are brutal!
3) Take nothing that you cannot carry one handed so you can keep track of the littlies
4) keep the tablets with you not them and only dole them out if needs be - they miss loads if they are not looking out the window. We love imagining what people are doing in their houses that overlook the train track!

Family railcard is well worth it! Lots of snacks for the journey keep my kids happy.

We use the fold down table on the back of the chairs for rolling our plasticine on & making our models. We also put a small piece of the plasticine under our chessboard to prevent it from moving on a bumpy ride

Walk up the platform for the best chance of an emptier carriage. Get the children to make their own 'Things to spot on the Journey' list. Obviously it will include poo and dinosaurs but hey ho 😄 We love travelling by train

we love the train we try to spot how many animals can we see by the next stop xx

We love days out by train. I normally take a rucksack. Snacks are a must. The seats with a table are great for the kids. We love to take a pack of cards, uno, dobble. Pen and paper. Perfect for drawing things u see. Also great for hang man etc. We love to play the A-Z game, where u have to think of things beginning with that letter.

We always book the seats before hand to ensure that we have a table, that way the little ones get to play games and face each other instead of staring at the back of a seat and get bored easily.

Book a seat in a coach near the toilets with baby changing! I've been caught out by this before. I had assumed that all of the toilets would be big enough to change a nappy on the Edinburgh to London train but I was wrong...

Make sure you travel with plenty to keep kids occupied - we use a pack called things to see on the train - which my son can tick off when he sees something. He packs his own rucksack with toys, colouring books and coloured pencils. We usually take a picnic lunch and he gets to carry his lunch in his backpack. We always let him choose a magazine at the station, usually with stickers and games in so keeps him occupied. We also try to get up and walk on the train as it helps to relieve boredom.

Snacks, pound land toys, a table, earplugs for surrounding passengers

Book a table and be in the same carriage as the loo (but not right opposite it!)

plan ahead and take packed lunch and games for children x

My son loves the train, so he is happy just going for a day trip into London on the train, riding on some buses and coming home again on the train! (We squeeze in lunch somewhere nice too)!

Also - get a family railcard!

Thanks everyone for posting. The winner of the prize draw is Ganne1.

My kids love train journeys, makes a day out even more exciting. If it's a longer journey I take plenty of snacks and drinks, puzzle/dot to dot/wordsearch books and travel games- snakes and ladders/ connect 4 Tec. The journey flies by!

Get a family and friends railcard for big discounts meaning more money for treats

We get our LO involved in planning the trip and looking at the map to figure out where we're going. He likes to mark off the stations as we're going

Definetely use vouchers if you can, we are huge fans of tesco club card vouchers for days out. Or vouchers from cereal boxes etc for those top theme parks! Why pay more?

If we save money on entrance, it means we could buy lunch instead of carrying it around all morning, and perhaps the kids would have a few quid left for a gift shop purchases too!