Confused about train tickets

You buy tickets from a train operating company. LNER is the main train operating company for that route. Just go to their site and book a ticket. It's worth noting you cam book any route via any of the train operating companies, so if for whatever reason you have trouble on the LNER site, use one of the other operators.

I'd recommend against using third party sellers such as Trainline and Rail Europe. They add a booking fee to their sales.

And have fun - its a really nice route with great views just after Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Trains to York depart from Kings Cross, not Paddington. So you first need to take a bus, the Undergound or a taxi from Paddington to Kings Cross

Yes!

Avoid sites like the Trainline as they will charge more. LNER operate the line from London (Kings Cross) to York and York to Edinburgh so definitely use their own site. Tickets are very unlikely to be cheaper elsewhere.

'Advance' tickets will be the cheapest option if you can be flexible on times (or even dates) - the cheapest tickets are always flagged on the LNER website. They are on sale now.

You will have to use that exact train though if you book an 'advance' ticket - if you need a bit of flexibility on the day go for a 'flexible' ticket and pay more.

Trainline charge a very small fee. However, they use an algorithm called split ticketing, which can make the tickets cheaper than using an operator.

No, Scotrail is the best website. Unlike the Trainline they do not charge commission.

You would not be going from Paddington to York- you would be going by tube from Paddington to Kings Cross, then train Kings Cross to York.

As the trains have so few stops there are few places where a split can be effected. Very often the cheapest fares are by leaving from St Pancras and doing a split on Sheffield- but that route also takes longer.

The cheapest LNER trains are often the ones which terminate at York.

Likewise the cheapest route by a country mile from Edinburgh to York is often the longest in time terms, changing trains at Newcastle and travelling throughout with Trans Pennine. The question is really how much you favour speed over saving a few pounds.

Trainline may charge slightly more but it's so much easier than trying to figure out which train company goes where. I think the most I spent on a trainline commission was about £1 over the regular train site.

You don't have to figure out which train company goes where - you can book any route with any of them, without the commission. Or go to the National Rail site. It's really not hard :)

Or go to the National Rail site. It's really not hard :)

I stand corrected. Score one for the people in this site. I've compared a trip from Covent Garden to Hampton Court and the cost on Trainline was about £21 and on the National Site was about £13.50. I didn't notice such a difference last time I spent time in London pre-pandemic. And I don't think I knew that all the sites would sell tickets for the others. I've downloaded the LNER app from my Trip in November.

The only challenge is figuring out the name of some of the stations to look them up.

Covent Garden to Hampton Court is a journey within the London area, so use the TFL website Single fare finder and pay £7 with contactless.

Allan, it's worth using ScotRail specifically since it looks for opportunities to save you money via split ticketing.

Not just ScotRail, also:

CrossCountry
East Midlands Railway
Greater Anglia
Northern
West Midlands Railway/London North Western Railway

These all have their booking engine provided by The Trainline, hence exactly the same splitsave functionality is available but without any commission or booking fees.

That certainly isn't true of the Northern Rail website, which I use every day.

Interestingly the Northern Ticket Vending Machines (TVM's) provide very slightly more functionality than the website (but not to offer split save). Not so much as to make a material difference but I always check fares on the website, then buy from the TVM's and often get marginally better deals or tickets not available on the web.

Whether or not of the others I don't know. But Scotrail say they are the only ones to have enabled that functionality.

It is very interesting that for Covent Garden to Hampton Court it is a bit cheaper to do 'split ticketing' across Wimbledon. That is get off at Wimbledon, swipe out, wait for one minute then swipe back in. Whether the saving is worth the effort or time is debateable, but a strange quirk. No idea if that is unique to that particular journey or a wider quirk when travelling from a Zone 1 underground station.

I was informed all whitelabel Trainline derived Train Operating Company websites' booking systems offered it, but it does indeed appear to be not quite all. Some seem to only have the functionality in their apps but not websites.

Whether the saving is worth the effort or time is debateable, but a strange quirk.

Although it looks like a single set of zones in London for Underground & rail there are actually five different scales for single fares depending on the mixture of lines. / modes you use. The most expensive combination is using any national rail and the Underground / DLR / Elizabeth Line (between Paddington and Abbey Wood). So it can sometimes be possible to shave off a little by tapping on & off again at places that will vary by the journey to take advantages of different scales. Really postgraduate stuff involving deep dives of the fare system to save generally small sums - and irrelevant if capping applies.

This has interested me a lot, so I did a little digging and found out that the Man in Seat 61 addresses this on his Britain page and has a section that gives info about split ticketing (scroll down to Split-Ticketing):

Check prices at www.thetrainline.com (which has a built-in split ticket checker) or a split-ticketing site such as trainsplit.com.

You then click to buy all the tickets online as one transaction, as easily as buying one ticket. There's no booking fee unless they make you a saving, then they take a small fee out of the saving. (emphasis added)

The benefit (if any) of split ticketing varies enormously from route to route and time period to time period. I might only save 60p on an off-peak 45-mile trip from Aylesbury to London, but if I needed to catch the 07:06 from London to Plymouth tomorrow morning I could save almost £40 using these systems.

He also talks about Trainline and another site called https://trainsplit.com that uses the same system.

Trainline & Trainsplit do not use the same system for finding splits. Trainline and Scotrail do use the same system but only find one split & being as Scotrail do not charge a fee, of the the two, I would use them. (Trainline a very good for finding fares on the European mainland and the site is easy to use). Trainsplit can come up with multiple splits as can > https://www.traintickets.com/?/

So, check your proposed journeys with the different sites to see what them come with. If you know where split(s) can make a difference, you could even book with the actual train company concerned; for example, GWR run from London (Paddington) to Bath/ Bristol/ Cardiff and just about all trains stop at Swindon - which has been a good place to do a split to reduce the price.

On weekdays, off peak fares start around 9.30am. If you leave on a train before 9.30am you will be charged the higher fare for the whole journey & can’t use the 2 Together Railcard. Find the first place the train stops at after 9.30 and do a split and from that point on, you can get the 2 Together Discount if you have that Railcard.