Thoughts on BritRail or other rail cards?

BritRail is hard for people here to gauge because we have so little exposure to it. I only know it because I work in the rail industry.

From what I know though, BritRail works best if you’re travelling long distances in a short space of time, especially if at short notice, and if you’re looking for flexibility to take any train you want.

It may be worth searching your journeys on the National Rail website and adding up the prices to see how it compares with BritRail.

If you can commit to a specific train and departure time, you may be able to get Advance tickets for much less that the daily use fee of BritRail Pass. Then get a Two Together railcard and get another 30% off the discounted fare.

Examples of savings with Advence fares for early April if booked now: Ipswich to Manchester Piccadilly, £43 instead of the £128 walk-up fare for Off-Peak ticket. Or Oxford to London, £5.40 to £9.50 instead of the £28.10 walk-up fare. Then talk 30% off the Advance fares if you get a Two Together Railcard for £30.

I'm traveling around England in September and looked at Britrail. The Britrail pass IS expensive and adding up all my train travel for 8 days it wasn't cost effective. However in checking out the other national rail passes I found that the Two Together railcard would work nicely. Its 30 gbp and gives you a 1/3 discount on railway tickets which if you buy an advance purchase ticket makes for a pretty low price. We will take our passport photos and our first day will go to St. Pancras to get the railcard in person. If you will be traveling together the whole trip I think you would do better with a two together card and its a much more reasonable price.

I have used the two together card with good success in the past. Here are a few important things to know.
1. You can buy your tickets in advance, even before you buy the railcard. Just mark that you have the two together rail card. You won't be able to use them without the railcard, but you can buy them in advance to take advantage of low fares.
2. You can even fill out the application in advance by printing it out at home. Bring the passport photos with you.
3. Stop at the first manned train station that you encounter and purchase the railcard. They will also print out all of your tickets that you pre-purchased for you. Make sure both of you are there and that you travel together. It took us about 15 minutes total.

Wonderful information - many thanks to all of you!

www.seat61.com

This expert is keen on strategies to save money.

Also if your traveling out of London don't assume it doesn't matter which station you travel from. Yesterday I was browsing tickets from London to Oxford. A ticket from Paddington station to Oxford for a train at 10:00am was 28.00 pounds. However a ticket from Marylebone to Oxford at 10:00am same day was 5.60 pounds (a 13 gbp savings). The strange thing is that these 2 stations are only 6 mins drive apart. It pays to do a little investigation when it comes to the british rail system. There is a website that will do split ticketing to save money too - www.trainsplit.com - and I have seen some pretty substantial savings there.

I think that this site is probably the best at telling you how to split the train tickets to get the lowest price:>https://www.traintickets.com

The cheap advance fares tend to come out around 11 weeks ahead. If you need to change train mid journey, you will probably find it cheaper to buy an advance for each leg of the journey as a through advance may not be available and you get screwed for a higher fare.

When you go from Liverpool to Cardiff, you can do it 2 ways > via Crewe (change) is much more expensive & if you do go this way, split the ticket at Crewe. I would do it this way - pay on the day local train to Chester. Then I would have a look around this historic small city before taking an advance purchase train direct to Cardiff. This will be the cheaper way. (Test out the fares on the site above).
https://www.visitcheshire.com/chester

When you go from Cardiff to Oxford, you should find it cheaper to split at Swindon - but, you actually change trains at the next stop = Didcot. (Note that some express trains don’t stop at either).

The 2 Together Railcard discount is not valid before 9.30am on weekdays.

Cardiff to Oxford now requires two changes of train at both Swindon and Didcot through most of a weekday (Didcot only at weekends, once an hour). This is a result of new timetable 'improvements'.