Rail Pass vs Point to Point Train Travel

When is your trip? Do you have a fixed itinerary at this point, or do you want to retain flexibility to change the dates and times of your travel legs up to the time you travel? Although walk-up fares can be very high in the UK, if you buy early you can often get deep discounts. Travelers with fixed schedules typically find a rail card not economically advantageous. However, I don't think you can change or cancel the deeply discounted tickets after they are purchased.

If you haven't already done so, you should at least check the base fares for your travel legs. The sum of those fares will be the maximum you pay if you buy individual tickets (unless you alter your itinerary). You could pay less for Advance tickets if you buy your tickets before the day of travel. I like to use https://www.scotrail.co.uk/ for ticketing, because it will offer to split tickets at an intermediate point if that saves money.

For example, a morning trip from Glasgow to Liverpool would cost between £44.30 and £76.40 if you bought a ticket now for travel on Thursday, Feb 26. The same trip on the morning of March 5 could cost as little as £32.50. For March 12 I found one morning train at £21.90 and another at £29. This is why the rail pass may not make financial sense.

Since there are apparently at least two of you, you may want to consider a Two Together Railcard. That will cost £35 (one card covers both of you) and provides a 1/3 discount on point-to-point tickets (including discounted Advance tickets). The Two Together Railcard has two limitations:

• The two registered users must travel together anytime the card is used.
• The card provides no discounts for travel before 9:30 AM on Monday-Friday, except for public holidays.

Our itinerary is pretty much set, as far as dates go. There are 3 of us..me, my sister & her husbands and we’re all 75+ seniors. We’ll be in the UK Oct 1-15 so there’s plenty of time to purchase tickets in advance but there seems to be so many places online selling tickets I wasn’t sure where to start looking, someone suggested “rome2rio” and someone else said reserve through the stations. Thanks for the tip about Scotrail….I was looking on britrail and it seemed like the flexible rail pass was cheaper than what I was looking at. Coming from CA and not having much experience with train travel, other than Amtrak, it’s been hard to navigate.

Do you know if rail passes are limited to certain dates & times? I got the feeling that you could make reservations and be rather safe getting to where you were going and some blogs say you can just show up and get a ticket. That might be a little too unpredictable for our group.

Do not use Rome2Rio! It can be wildly off-base. There are many companies operating trains in Great Britain, and they all sell each other's tickets--at what I believe is exactly the same price. I used to just go to https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/, look at all my options and choose the one I preferred. NationalRail then automatically transferred me to the website of the company operating my train so I could make the purchase. But then I learned on this forum that sometimes you can save money by buying two separate tickets rather than one, and that ScotRail does that automatically. (There are also some private companies that sell split tickets, but you normally pay extra when you buy tickets from a private company.)

In most cases you can buy rail tickets shortly before you want to travel, but you will in that case pay full price, and it can be very high. (Take a look in the morning at fares for the current day.) If you want to travel that way, it's possible a rail pass will be a smart purchase for you. I you are willing to buy ahead of time, it's a different story. If you're moving very rapidly through Great Britain and don't need a pass that covers a lot of time, maybe it will make financial sense for you.

There are no time constraints on use of a Britrail pass. As long as the train isn't full, you can take the train with either a purchased ticket or the rail pass. It's a good idea to get a seat reservation when you're a tourist traveling some distance. It's not pleasant to have to stand in the vestibule until a seat becomes available. There are no limitations on reserving seats with a rail pass unless the train is completely full. (It's different in France, where there's a quota for rail pass holders on some trains that can prevent travelers from taking their desire train even if there are still tickets available for the train.) I believe seat reservations are free.

I must warn you it's not rare to board a train and find that none of the seat reservations are posted. When that has happened to me, there have always been plenty of seats available.

Since you're seniors, you have another option, in addition to the Britrail Pass and the Two Together Rail Card I mentioned in my earlier post. There's also a Senior Rail Card available for £35. Each traveler requires his or her own Senior Rail Card, unlike the Two Together Rail Card that covers two people. But the Senior Rail Card has the advantages of being without a time constraint. You can travel during morning rush hour on weekdays if you want to. [<< That is incorrect; see isn31c's post below.] So you could use a Senior Rail card and your sister and her husband could use a Two Together Rail Card. The total cost for those rail cards would be £70, and you'd all be able to buy tickets at 1/3 off. But your sister and her husband would have to be sure they always travel together. It would not be possible to use a ticket purchased with the Two Together Rail Card if one of them decided to rest in the hotel one day while the other went off on a day trip.

I've used a Senior Rail Card on multiple trips. It's an easy process to buy one at a train station. I believe they can also be purchased online, but I've never done that. You don't have to buy the rail cards before you buy train tickets at the discounted price; you just have to have the rail cards when you board the train.

Thank you so much for taking the time to give me such valuable information for me. I really appreciate it and I will be able to feel more comfortable when purchasing our tickets. This made much more sense to me than everything I was reading on sponsored sites such as “RomeToRio”.

There are folks on this forum more knowledgeable than I am--including at least one person who worked in the rail industry, so feel free to come back and ask more questions.

There are time constraints on the Senior Railcard (although they won't affect you)- namely in London and the South East not before 0930 on Monday to Friday- on many routes that is eased to 0900.
I know what I'm doing, but even I got caught by that last year. I was travelling on the domestic version of a Britrail (no time constraints) but reduced in price by around £300 with a Senior Railcard (to which time constraints do apply). I couldn't work out why my paper pass had suddenly stopped working in London on the Elizabeth Line, Thameslink and Great Northern. Luckily nor could gateline staff work it out either- so I didn't have to pay a penalty or excess fare, as I was just waved through. It was as I sat on the Great Northern to Peterborough that the penny dropped, so I made a clear mental note.

If you can commit to specific trains with Advance Tickets then Britrail is unlikely to be the cheapest option -

Fares on 25 March (with railcard)
Inverness to Edinburgh on the 0755 LNER (to London, best train of the day) £14.45 (or £27.10 in 1st class, includes your breakfast), later Scotrail trains are not too much more (but no food in 1st). So on the 0755 first class is a no brainer.
Edinburgh to Glasgow any train flexible fare £11.05
Glasgow to Liverpool £13.50 on the 0745 direct train, £14.30 on the 0838, change Preston, £19.30 on the 0939 change Preston
Liverpool to Bristol on the 0808 (change Birmingham) £15.30 (split tickets) or £16.15 on the 0912 or £38.10 on the 1012
Bristol to London £42.35 Off Peak Single (valid any train after 0830 weekdays, any time weekends)

For the ability to be away before 0930 to maximise your day at the next destination 3 x senior railcards will be your best option, two together has the 0930 time limit which wastes a lot of tourist time.

Advance fares always come with seat reservations on long distance journeys like yours, Edinburgh to Glasgow trains are non reserveable commuter trains. For anywhere else if you have a ticket (like a pass) without seat reservation then you create an account with GWR (Great Western) and can reserve a seat on any reserveable UK train with them, often even after it has left it's station of origin. I do that on Avanti West Coast trains after the train has left Euston, and sometimes evict people who thought they had found vacant seats at Euston- but between there and Warrington or Wigan I've nabbed their seats using the GWR system.

And you can, in principle, amend even the cheap Advance Tickets (or bid for cheap 1st class upgrades) by using Seat Frog- https://seatfrog.com/

That applies on Avanti West Coast, Cross Country, East Midlands Trains, Grand Central Trains, Greater Anglia, Great Western, LNER, Northern, Trans Pennine and Transport for Wales.

I've never heard of SeatFrog. Can you describe how it works? How does the company make money?

I absolutely love this forum and special thanks to you "isn31c" for the comprehensive information that you gathered up so quickly & shared. I know it's going to come in handy when sharing with my sister & making our reservations next week. I already feel better about being able to hopefully make good decisions to get us where we're going.

I'm assuming that there are baggage bins, since we'll each have a bag with us while traveling from one place to the next.

Also, how soon do you need to show up at the station before your train departs?

Seat Frog make their money the same way as the likes of Trainline or the Split Ticket companies through fees and internal ticket commission.
The difference is that Seat Frog are officially endorsed, or at least they are by Northern Rail through various communication methods- e mail, station adverts and on train adverts on the screens in the train cars.

By internal commission, what I mean is that if I buy a £10 Advance Fare on a GWR train from GWR they keep all the £10. If I buy the same ticket from anywhere else (like Northern, Trainline etc) GWR keep most of the £10, but a % (let's say 5%) goes to the seller- so in this case Northern get 50p. If I buy a £30 flexible fare for the same GWR journey from Northern then Northern still get 50p, but the other £29.50 is then split between the various other companies I might travel with between a London Terminal and Bath by a complex formula- so Southern, South Western, TfL (Elizabeth Line), Cross Country (maybe) and maybe even another company thus GWR get let's say £20, Southern £1, South Western £6, TfL £2, Cross Country 50p.

How it works is, I tell Seat Frog I have an Advance Fare of £10 from Carlisle to Leeds on the 0824 on Friday, but I want to swop that onto the 1048- Seat Frog look at what the best fare is for the 1048- then give me what in essence is an 'excess' fare for the difference, and charge a £1 or £2 fee (whatever) to do that. Say the excess is £5- new fare £15- Seat Frog keep the £1/£2 fee + 25p (5% of £5).

Northern have yield management in this, so Seat Frog may say - can't upgrade you to the 1048, but would you like the 1326.

Likewise to upgrade an Advance standard class on LNER to 1st it is the same yield management formula. Behind the scenes there is some very, very complex stuff going on. So I am more likely to get a cheap 1st class upgrade at lunchtime than in the evening peak.

That is really useful information. On the Train Swap webpage (https://trainswap.seatfrog.com/) I see icons for Transpennine Express, LNER and Cross Country in addition to Northern, so it appears one might be able swap those companies' tickets, too (subject to availability, policy, etc.)

Would you consider creating a new thread to highlight this service? (If you've done so in the past, I apologize; I try to keep up with the forum even when I'm traveling, but I am sure I overlook some things.)

I have found "The Man In Seat 61" web site very helpful for train travel in Europe. He, Mark Smith, is based in the UK

@gord.smoker What a fabulous informational gift you shared. Thanks so much...he has answers to questions I didn't even know I had. Ha ha.