I will have to travel to Birmingham and Milton Keynes at various times
over the next few weeks, and I plan to go via rail.

I would like to be able to cut down on my costs to do so. I have seen
the advertisements for as little as £5 in one direction, but I notice
that one must reserve the tickets well in advance.

I have heard, however, that it is possible to acquire discounts for rail
journeys, suburban and further afield, in as little as 1 hour before
departure.

I don't know how to take advantage of that, however, and I don't know if
this is possible or not at present.

Is there indeed any way to cut on rail costs, besides splitting the
journey? Season tickets would not be viable in this case.

Many thanks in advance.

On Fri, 01 Apr 2022 19:08:52 +0100, hounslow3@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> I will have to travel to Birmingham and Milton Keynes at various times
> over the next few weeks, and I plan to go via rail.
>
> I would like to be able to cut down on my costs to do so. I have seen
> the advertisements for as little as £5 in one direction, but I notice
> that one must reserve the tickets well in advance.
>
> I have heard, however, that it is possible to acquire discounts for rail
> journeys, suburban and further afield, in as little as 1 hour before
> departure.

You can buy advance tickets up to the day before - the catch being of
course that they're released in limited numbers, so it's likely that
there are none of the cheapest ones left. Some companies allow booking
even later than that - it's not entirely clear, but it does appear that
Avanti may be one of them. So if you look in the Avanti app or website it
should let you know what's available.

> Is there indeed any way to cut on rail costs, besides splitting the
> journey? Season tickets would not be viable in this case.

The obvious ones are to travel off-peak with an off-peak ticket, or to
travel on a ticket restricted to cheaper TOCs. You can see the fares at
brfares.com and if you're not in a hurry you might be in luck. There's an
anytime return restricted to WMR and LNR only at £45.80 rather than the
£100.60 that's also valid on Avanti.
If you're not travelling at peak times the off-peak return is £35.60, or
£24.50 for WMR/LNR. There's also a super off peak at £17.00 which is WMR/
LNR only and a lot of time restrictions - but if it suits, you're not
going to get much cheaper.
There's also a flex season (8 days in 28) shown, though I don't know
much about that.

Mike

In message <t27f3l$ska$1@gioia.aioe.org>, at 19:08:52 on Fri, 1 Apr
2022, "hounslow3@yahoo.co.uk" <hounslow3@yahoo.co.uk> remarked:
>I will have to travel to Birmingham and Milton Keynes at various times
>over the next few weeks, and I plan to go via rail.

Starting from where?

>I would like to be able to cut down on my costs to do so. I have seen
>the advertisements for as little as £5 in one direction, but I notice
>that one must reserve the tickets well in advance.
>
>I have heard, however, that it is possible to acquire discounts for
>rail journeys, suburban and further afield, in as little as 1 hour
>before departure.

Some train companies are experimenting with "last minute" tickets, which
I suspect are a bit like the "standby" airline tickets of old. They are
cheap, but may not be available when you want to travel. If they always
were, everyone buy them!

I just checked Derby-Sheffield on XC's app, and got a price of £6.30 on
a couple of trains - one of which only a few minutes in advance {20.33
train}. Later in the evening there's one at £4 {22.39 train} the rest
are £13.30 {incl 20.48, 22.29}

brfares.com says the £6.30 is an "EMR only" fare, the £4 "Northern Only"
and £13.30 is the off-peak day single (any service).

Looking at the timetables:

20.33 EMR from London
20.48 XC from Plymouth
22.29 EMR from London
22.39 Northern from Nottingham (I think this is a once-a-day service,
so a bit of a freak result)

>I don't know how to take advantage of that, however, and I don't know
>if this is possible or not at present.

Try the XC app.

>Is there indeed any way to cut on rail costs, besides splitting the
>journey? Season tickets would not be viable in this case.

Flexi-season might, depending on the time of day, especially if in the
peaks when few advance tickets might be available.

>Many thanks in advance.

--
Roland Perry