11:54 AM Cheap train tickets: cut travel costs | ||||
#cheap tıckets # Find hidden fares & split tickets
The train ticketing system is a farce 20 ways to slash fares, including.
Book 12 weeks early for the cheapest tickets - check now for Christmas and New Year trains
This is because contractually Network Rail must have the timetable set 12 weeks in advance. So train operators commonly release cheap advance tickets shortly after. It's not always dead on 12 weeks though, often more like 10 or 11. Tickets are starting to be available now for journeys in early to mid-February but it is still possible to bag cheap Christmas tickets. When we checked we found an off peak journey from London to Manchester on 23 Dec for Ј20 (it's Ј81 on the day). Get a free alert when tickets go on saleIf you know when and where you want to go, there's a sneaky way to be first in the cheap tickets queue. If you sign up and fill in your journey details with TheTrainline's* ticket alert system, you will get an email when cheap advance tickets for that specific journey come on sale (commonly the cheapest fares). To help, National Rail has a future travel chart. showing the furthest away date in the future you can buy advance tickets for each train firm. Split your tickets, not your journey
It's perfectly allowed within the National Rail Conditions of Carriage. The only rule is that the train must call at the stations you buy tickets for. Save Ј219 on a London-Durham return To show how this works, we unearthed this cracking example. For a London to Durham return, the cheapest ticket was an anytime return at Ј301. Yet the train stopped at York, so instead we found four singles:
The total cost for those tickets was just Ј82. a saving of Ј219. Just to clear it up… It's the same train at the same time - the only difference is you've four tickets covering the journey rather than one Full step-by-step guide to finding split tickets Find the journey's cheapest standard price Get the standard journey price. Without it, you won't know if you can save. Find out where the train stops
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. To keep your spending away from the buffers, you need to learn how to play the system with hidden tricks.
Most people know if you book early, you can get cheaper train tickets, yet often these vanish quicker than empty seats on a commuter journey. To ensure a bargain, the key is to start looking about 12 weeks before - so if you're looking for a cheap seat aboard the Polar Express home for Christmas, you should check right now.
This is the big trick everyone should know. Instead of buying tickets for the whole journey, bizarrely, buying tickets for its constituent parts separately can slash the price – even though you're travelling on exactly the same train.
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