6 of us will be traveling from London's Waterloo Station to Salisbury one day and to Windsor another day in mid June. Do we need to purchase train tickets online now (April) before we arrive in June? Visiting the websites in the Rick Steves London book, I see different prices for same tickets and cannot put them into a cart on one. Will we be able to buy tickets the day of our travel? Should we purchase a few days early at the train station when we get to London? Do tickets run out? Thank you for any advice or tips.
Posted by
Cornwall
378 posts
Trains don’t sell out, with the exception of Eurostar. You won’t save money buying in advance.
Posted by
Duluth 🛶
8159 posts
Well, you can look for Advance tickets, which come out about 3+ weeks ahead of time, and those will definitely save you money. Figure out which railway you need for the various destinations, then sign up to receive notifications by email, and you should receive word when the Advance tickets go on sale (or news of other sales). I saved a lot of money doing that.
Posted by
Lake District, England
8134 posts
There are advance fares on the Salisbury route, but not on the Windsor route.
Whether you want to be tied down to specific trains on Advance tickets or prefer flexibility at a higher cost is your choice.
With 6 of you it is worth looking into whether you can benefit from the groupsave offer to Salisbury- https://www.southwesternrailway.com/train-tickets/ticket-types/groupsave-train-tickets (not available on advance fares).
Great Western Railway (for Windsor) also have groupsave- https://www.gwr.com/your-tickets/ways-to-save/cheap-tickets/groupsave
That means that the usual advice just to use credit cards to tap in and out to Windsor doesn't work for such a group size - where it will be cheaper to buy actual tickets- whether beforehand or on the day is your choice.
Paying by contactless to Windsor is £14.20 each off peak, on groupsave for 6 it is £59.60 for the group
If there is at least one child it would be worth looking into whether a £30 family and friends railcard will give you a cheaper overall fare than groupsave.
Groupsave and Railcard discounts can't be combined!!