More Train Questions!!

We use the train all over Europe, but have not been to England yet - so I can't answer your questions.

Just wanted to let you know of another great train website for learning all things trains is seat61.com

His site is amazing and there is even a CONTACT section where you can email him a question and he is great at responding.

Hi Judy -

I’m sure there are others on here who are much more knowledgeable than myself, but for what it’s worth, yes, book now. You’ll save most by booking what are called ‘Advance’ tickets, but beware these tie you to a specific train, miss it at your peril - and expense. There are more flexible options, but ‘Advance’ is the largest saving.

Also, where you get the option (I’d think all but your connection to Moreton-in-the-Marsh) reserve a seat. It costs nothing and it’s better than sourcing a seat on the train, which as the main lines are always busy, are in short supply and rarely a whole lot together.

Ian

I just use national rail.co.uk, choose the train I want, and let the website connect me to the appropriate train company. It is quick and easy. Depending on the train company, you may have to create an account there to complete the purchase.

On many routes there are substantial savings with advance purchase—-the so-called Advance tickets are released at a low price but are limited. Figuring out exactly when to buy is tricky these days—-it used to be 12 weeks in advance, but that seems to have changed. Indeed, looking at your York to Edinburgh train, it appears there are still Advance fares for tomorrow’s LNER trains for £38 to £46. The regular walk-up price is £110. But things could change for May, especially on a weekend. The Advance fare for May 21, if bought today, is £38.80 on the Cross-Country train or £33.60 on LNER. (You may want to get advice from our UK friends on which company might be better). Note that Advance tickets are inflexible—they are good only on the train you book and cannot be changed.

As for Senior prices, you would each need to buy a Senior Railcard, and then you get a 30% discount on fares, even from the low Advance price. But your savings on your 3 trips with Advance fares likely would not amount to the £60 you pay for the Senior Railcards.

A better option, and the one we use if we have multiple trips in the UK, is a TwoTogether Railcard, which also costs £30 but you only need to buy one. That may or may not be worth the investment. Note that it is good for a full year, so if you might return to the UK during that time it becomes a better value.

Yes,
When you say 'we' I assume that it is you and a travelling partner- get yourselves a two together railcard at £30 for the two of you, rather than a senior railcard at £30 each.
https://www.twotogether-railcard.co.uk/
Irrespective of train operating company you can buy all your tickets from one company- Americans seem to find the LNER site to be most user friendly.
https://www.lner.co.uk/

Buy your tickets in advance for the best fares.

At the moment there are no through advance fares to Moreton from anywhere due to the bridge reconstruction south of Oxford.
So on Sunday 14 May- you will need to travel from London Marylebone (NOT Paddington) to Oxford by Chiltern trains- at 42 minutes past each hour to Oxford arrive at 8 minutes past the hour (1 1/2 hours later), change trains, depart Oxford at 50 minutes past each hour.
There are no advance fares currently. It is cheapest to buy tickets on the day on this route-
2 Together for 2 people London Marylebone to Oxford £41.80, then buy separate tickets from Oxford to Moreton 2T for 3 people £16.60.
This is NOT the normal situation, where advance fares at a fraction of this price would be available.
You could travel on the 12 minutes past each hour train to Oxford, but the hourly connection at Oxford is tighter.

For 17 May, due to the lack of through fares buy this as
2T for 2 People Moreton to Worcestershire Parkway-
on the 0918 train is £32
on the 1019 train and all later trains is £21.10

Then buy separate advance fares Worcestershire Parkway to York, on the 1014 and 1114 trains only is £62.10 for 2 people on 2T.
You have 25 minutes to change from the High Level platform to the Low Level Platform at W Parkway. So your best value train is the 1019 train from Moreton then the 1114 train from Worcestershire Parkway. You will have a change of trains at Birmingham New Street.

On 21 May Edinburgh to York buy an advance train- 2T for two people that day on many trains is £44.30. Most of these are LNER trains, the general view is that their trains are better than Cross Country anyway.

The best thing to do is to buy your tickets first (specifying that you are on a Two Together Railcard), then buy your Railcard at any time before you arrive in the UK, or even at your first station after arriving here.
To get the advance fares to York and Edinburgh book ASAP. The prices will only go up.

By the way the Journey Planners are NOT currently correct, in showing a through train every hour from Paddington to Moreton.. The planners are only being updated weekly for that route but we know there are no through trains from Paddington until at least 10 June.

Oh and we'll tell you everything the man in seat 61 will, and possibly more.

The Man in seat 61 is the defacto site for rail travel info on rail in the UK and Europe.

https://www.seat61.com/

Follow him on Twitter also, as he gets updates out faster on Twitter. Its also worth following the rail companies on Twitter, most are very active with service updates on there.

I always use The Trainline when booking tickets/researching journeys I want to do. You can also see London to Edinburgh by Train for an overview of the trip.

The article in the previous post talks about booking tickets between London and Edinburgh with Virgin Trains. Good luck with that as they are the previous operator. At one stage they operated both east and west coast main lines to Scotland. They "handed back the keys" to the East Coast, and later failed to have their west coast contract renewed (leading to the current operator, Avanti). Before the east coast debacle they also ran what is now Cross Country trains.
Now Virgin Trains is just a memory.
So book with them and you will go nowhere, fast.

And the Man in Seat 61 is so good that he doesn't mention the Bridge incident south of Oxford at all, nor is he commenting on how come Great Western Railway are selling tickets on trains which they know they will be unable to operate.
Nor is he mentioning a forthcoming big line closure on my local line.
At least the much maligned Avanti trains have the integrity to withdraw trains from sale entirely until the timetable is correct and confirmed- even if that means a very late timetable release. LNER do the same.
Yes the Oxford closure was sudden and unplanned, but GWR have now had long enough to get their timetable and booking systems correct. They know from Network Rail that the line can not be reopened until June, so why sell trains in May.

Judy, as Chinalake67 and Laughing Spam Filter mentioned, The Man in Seat 61 is an excellent site for anyone new to taking trains in a specific country. Most of us who have been here for years, rather than weeks, suggest reading him for good general knowledge of a specific county's train system.

While he might tell you to take the 6:02 with a change in ChooChooville (mostly on long distance routes) he also talks about how to purchase tickets, find seats, what to expect on the trains, etc.

He's usually too busy taking trains and looking at rail systems worldwide to write about every single temporary closure. Anyway, reporting on every news bit is not why he's there. He's there to give people knowledge of the train systems.

He's also very good at responding to questions. He and I have had some interesting conversations over the years. He'll make suggestions and if you decide to do differently, that's fine with him. He won't argue to prove he's right.

Yet another train question. Why am I always being shown single fares when I want a return ticket?
And: I'm struggling with a legacy computer that won't open trainline.com or Transport for Wales. National Rail enquiries seemed to wok but wouldn't allow me to pick a later departure time. SouthWesternRailway worked OK, but wouldn't allow me to register as I'm not currently located in the UK, although its registration form happily entered my Australian address!

At splitfare I was shown a return fare for Reading->Neath which was lower than the 2 x £27 advance fares I found elsewhere, but my return date was outside its range, although within the range for advance fares on other sites.

Yet another train question. Why am I always being shown single fares when I want a return ticket?

Which site?

And: I'm struggling with a legacy computer that won't open trainline.com or Transport for Wales. National Rail enquiries seemed to wok but wouldn't allow me to pick a later departure time. SouthWesternRailway worked OK, but wouldn't allow me to register as I'm not currently located in the UK, although its registration form happily entered my Australian address!

Have you tried a different browser? How old is your computer and what OS are you using? Is it up to date?

cgrichard-
On most of the sites it will show you the single fares side by side, but if you scroll down the page it should offer you all the various return options as well.
Most of the company websites seem to work that way now, as they are mainly all run by the same internet company, with the same software.

The best website, it seems, for overseas users, is LNER, and you can book any ticket you want off that website.
Other people have reported the South West Trains website as just not working overseas, when it is simultaneously fine in the UK, and TfW (although recommended elsewhere) also seems to give issues.
On National Rail Enquiries when you get a set of results, at the bottom of the results you should see a little down arrow, with the words 'Later trains' (on the left hand side), or at least that is what I get. If you click on that then if that button exists it will give you later results and just keep on clicking it to give you later and later trains.
In theory any aggregator or train company should give you the same date range as anywhere else. But if you see cheaper fares somewhere else for some odd reason then buy through them.

Many thanks for the helpful replies, which I can no longer see as I write this.

LNER proves to be another that fails to show results.
On the National Rail site, I can see the up arrow for earlier trains, but not the down arrow for later ones. I think I may have to use the computers in my local library which have up-to-date software, at least for the journey planning stage. I don't like entering card & other personal info there, though.

The SouthWesternRailway site where I got nearest to making a booking, said that there were only 9 advance tickets left for either leg of my journey. Is that for real, or do they just say that to put pressure on to purchase?

Re- The SWR site- yes that figure is for real, then they will move to the next few tickets- which will be a £1 or so more expensive, and on it goes until they run out of advance allocation.
I know on Scotrail only 3 or 4 tickets at the very lowest rate are released for each train. How many depends on the company and the train.
Using the library is a good idea if even LNER isn't working for you. I would be happy paying on the library PC's- what I. personally, wouldn't be happy doing, is paying on your phone on a public wi-fi network, if your library has that. That would apply on any public wi-fi network.
It's beyond my tech savvyness but I am told the secure way to pay on your mobile device on public wi-fi is to have a VPN (Virtual Private Network) set up.
I really hope you can manage to resolve this.
The last resort would be to buy your tickets through Rail Europe, although it shouldn't have to come to that. (they charge an AUD 9.95 fee) You can set that (at top right) to pay in AUD.- https://www.raileurope.com/

Thank you so much for all the great advice!

Learning that trains are not going from London Paddington to Moreton-in-Marsh due to construction is certainly a game changer! Thank you for heads up!

"And the Man in Seat 61 is so good that he doesn't mention the Bridge incident south of Oxford at all"

It is on both his Twitter feed and website. Stu, Are you seriously saying you offer better advice than him? If so, point me to your interactive searchable website.

Thanks for good advice! Especially heads up about London to Morton-in-Marsh. We have purchased all our tickets. Took us four hours and it was complicated because we were dealing with different train lines. One time slot from London already sold out, so we had to go for second choice.
Unable to reserve seats on all legs of our journey. Will have to actually pick up tickets at train station in London. Some train companies web sites more difficult to maneuver.
But we are booked!

Thanks everyone!

It way well be that you haven’t failed to reserve seats on some trains, it may well just be that there are no reservable seats. They often aren’t on ‘local’/commuter trains away from the high speed routes. I wouldn’t be over concerned by it - I’m sure it will work out fine.