$279 for 3 train tickets from London to Crewe Station?!

For what dates are you looking and for that matter where? It may be that no Advance tickets are yet on sale for those dates, but the mention of prices in dollars raises suspicion that you are not looking directly at prices.

Dont use Google for this info: they don't control everything, yet. Go to National Rail, the umbrella organization for British Rail companies. Note that the fares depend on what date you're looking at. If your travel dates are more than 3 months out, you won't see the deeply discounted fares which show up several weeks before the date. I did a quick look for a random date in December 2017. for example, and see a one way (what they call a single) for as low as £22 per person.

Marco and Stan, thank you for your answers. Stan, thank you for recomending the proper site for us to look at. We'll be flying from the US into Heathrow, then taking the train to Crewe station before driving to Beddgelert, Wales. We'll be coming in Mid-August 2018.

I don't know how Google got this reputation for being THE go-to resource, but Caveat Emptor. You can google that for the meaning.
If you are willing to take the "slow" London Midland Rail, tickets 3 months out are 9 GBP pp.

Is the son an adult? Children under 5 are free, 5 and up to 16 are half price. Advance tickets (with a capital A, which tie you to a specific train and operator) as mentioned above are by far the cheapest but as said above are months and months from being released for your journey.

If you don't want to buy in advance you can get 3 person Groupsave discounts which gives a 34% discount.

Google is useless in this case, and gives completely wrong answers.

Another thing to add is that train tickets from Heathrow tend to default to the expensive Heathrow Express into London Paddington (nowhere near the station for Crewe) then you will need to change to a tube to get you to Euston for the train to Crewe.

Try booking your tickets from London Euston to Crewe - 90-minute journey, direct train, currently Advance tickets for three months from now are looking like £15.50 per person for a single.

To get to Euston from Heathrow you can use the tube. Takes about an hour but only costs about £6 each.

You all were so helpful on this front that I hope that you'll give me your opinion on our itinerary. Right now, we are exploring our itinerary options. We are planning to fly into and out on London even thought we'll be staying in Scotland the majority of our trip because it's about $300 per ticket cheaper to do so. It'll be my husband and I and our four year old son. We are nature lovers, more than history buffs.

Here are our options that we've considered so far for our 14 night trip.
1) Stay in London for 2 nights, Beddgelert (wales) for 3 nights then taking 1 night (two days) to get up to Scotland where we'll spend 6 nights around Lawers before working way to Edinburgh for 2 nights and then London until we fly home.

Or
2) Stay in London for 3 nights, take a sleeper car from London to Glasgow to stay for 2 nights (2 problems here, this adds an extra $800 total cost round trip and the train wouldn't leave until 11:50 pm. Quite late for a 4 year old to be kept out), rent a car in Glasgow then work our way up to Lawers (Scotland) for 7 nights, drive our rental car from Lawers to Edinbaugh for 1 night then take the sleeper car back to London to fly back to the US.

Other recommendations appreciated.

I would say option 1 (via Beddgelert), but in either case, don't take a night train. The London-Scotland night trains only make sense if you are going north of Edinburgh/Glasgow, The day train is just over 4 hours, so not a long time. It runs at least once per hour, plenty of choice. And the four year old, can run up and down, or rest as they like. Bring your own food and drink and make a picnic out of it.

I second what a previous poster said, why do people think Google is a good source for public transport info? It is not a European site, and struggles to adapt itself to European systems, both road and public transport.

You say R/T London is $300 cheaper, but does that factor in the cost of back-tracking to London? Transportation, lodging and meals - which may be more fun spent exploring where you really want to visit.

I recommend investigating "multi-city" tickets into London and back from Edinburgh. RS likes to call that "open jaw" but you won't find that option on any airline search engine.

Also, the website seat61 has tons of accurate information on traveling by train. And the loco2 website will let you set booking alerts and sends an email when the Advance train fares are available.

Enjoy the planning and the trip!

Beth, I am booking our flights using my chase sapphire credit card rewards points. Their redemption site does let us book multi-city flights in the manner that you've suggested. We are debating if the $900 total extra expense is worth it to us to be able to fly home from Edinbaugh instead of doubling back to London. It seems that the extra money may be worth it.

I am a bit confused. I read one of your other threads in which it sounded like you were already planning to leave out of Edinburgh to fly back to the U.S. When did that change?

I've waffled on it because of the extra expense of flying out of Edinbaugh. When considering that we don't want to lose time by coming back to London to fly out, the extra cost seems worth it.

You could consider flying in and out of Edinburgh. And get a rental car there, making it unnecessary to buy train tickets to anywhere.

You could also consider flying in and out of Manchester Airport, picking up a rental car there. It is close to Wales for starting your itinerary.

There is no reason to fly into London unless there are several things there that interest you and you want to see. Do you want to do any sightseeing in London? If not, don't fly in there, even to save a couple of hundred dollars/pounds. You will be wasting time out of your vacation.

I have never been to London before, but we aren't big city people. We mainly visit big cities for a quick dose of energy and history before we skate out to smaller towns/villages again.

While in London, I'd love to see the changing of the guard, visit Dowton Abbey and have high tea at Claridges Hotel (open to other suggestions near Downton Abbey or Kensington Palace). My concern with includeing Wales in our itinerary is that we'll be spending so much time in the car. However, on past trips, we've discovered many great small towns while driving from one place to the next. So, here is the latest itinerary:
London- 2 nights
Beth's-y-coed or Beddgelert (Wales)- 3 nights
Lake District on our way to Glasgow - 1 night
Glasgow (Scotland) - 2 nights
Lawer's (Scotland)- 5 nights
Edinbaugh- 2 nights
Thoughts? Are we cutting the Lake District too short but just stopping for a night? We've watched several of Rick's videos on YouTube and the Lake District looked great. This is why we're having a hard time deciding if we'd be better off cutting Wales to send more time there.

Hello. My two cents worth.... two nights in London will give you one full day
of touring. You don't have time to take the train outside of London to visit
Downton Abbey-Highclere Castle. Also, the changing of the guard is a huge waste of time unless
you get there really early so you have a front row view...so you are wasting valuable time
just standing around. Otherwise all you will see are the backs of heads and selfie sticks.

Westminster Abbey would be my recommendation. It is amazing.

The OP's post above dated Oct. 23, 3;23 pm, is a word for word duplicate of one of her previous posts a couple of days ago and has been responded to by many on this forum. Why the OP is still dwelling on the subject of Downton Abbey and Claridges is a mystery.

"have high tea at Claridges Hotel"

If you mean sandwiches, scones, cakes etc, then it's afternoon tea you want, not "high" tea (which is really dinner).

The differences:
http://www.timetravel-britain.com/articles/taste/tea.shtml

BTW, it's Edinburgh.

Thanks to those of you who gave a thoughtful response. I purchased the Michelin Green Guide to Scotland. It's helping narrow our options. We are trying to focus on narrowing our trip down, meaning that we don't want to spend all of our time in the car, but don't want to be bored either. There are just so many great places to see.

we don't want to spend all of our time in the car, but don't want to be bored either.
I don't think boredom will be a problem!

Sometimes a little slower pace gives you the chance to dig deeper instead of just hitting the highlights.