Heathrow to Kings Cross and train tickets

Waiting for British correspondents to roll out of bed, I took a look at the East Coast Railway site. Picking a random February Wednesday, the semi flexible fare is changeable only for off-peak trains. On this date, the off-peak trains are only the ones from 7 am to 2 pm, all the later afternoon and early evening train are peak fare and thus you could not ride them. Only the last train, the 7 pm, qualifies as off-peak.

You might just roll the dice and buy the cheap 7 pm train (assuming you are landing in the morning sometime). You can spend a few hours getting a adjusted to the time zone. Another idea is to spend the night in London recovering from the jet lag, and catch the 7 am train with the cheap fare.

The tube is definitely the simplest (and cheapest) way to King's Cross. No changes and about an hour transit time. The Heathrow Express is pricey and still leaves you to make your way to King's Cross on the tube or in a taxi.

0.0> For no money - you want to fly all night overnight from the left coast, fumble your way through the thrills of immigration, an hour on the tube, an hour at KX, then 4 hours on a train? Are you zombies? Or do you have some magic elixir or perhaps a Time-Turner?

0.1> Yes the Tube, Piccadilly Line. There are lifts and escalators. Follow the icons for the baby push chair.

1.> I always allow 90 minutes plus 15 minutes to get Tube Oyster Cards plus an hour on the Tube = 2:45.

2.> If you collect advance tickets in the station you can change up until departure time at the station, for the difference in available price plus a £10 charge. For all intents and purposes the ticket is nearly worthless. If, on the other hand you purchase them by deliver to your home or print@home you can only change them up to 17:00 the day before travel, and they must be delivered the same way as originally, and there is the £10 fee, plus the up-charge to the first available price, so they really are just worthless bookmarks.

3.> Super Off Peak tickets, the next cheapest beyond Advance, are available on the day of travel, are not restricted to any particular train, but must only be used at times that Super Off Peak tickets are valid. I don't know East Coast's validity times for Super Off Peak, but to use the times that London Midland uses Super Off Peaks are not valid into London before 13:00 arrival, out of London before 10:30 and not in either direction between 16:30 and 19:30. It is likely that East Coast restrictions are more restrictive. They also apply on LM on the weekends now. So you don't have to exchange them as long as they are valid. Only Advance tickets change prices. Anytime, Off Peak and Super Off Peak don't change, except for the change every 6 months to account for higher costs.
3.1> Yes.
3.2> Yes.
3.3> Yes.

4.> See above. You could have had Advance Tickets emailed to you for Print@Home. You could collect at a kiosk. I don't know if they still accept old-fashioned US swipe cards.

0.0.2> Still for no money, as long as you are are Heathrow couldn't you get a cheap flight to Edinburgh? You'll be so tired you won't be looking at the scenery. Or you could stay a day and night in London and, as Sam said, go up the next morning with certainty and a bit of awakeness.

Except for the last hour along the east coast, the train route is not particularly scenic.

I love trains, but since you'll already be at Heathrow I suggest that you fly to Edinburgh. To allow for plenty of connection time, book the 14:30 British Airways flight. Advance tickets are fairly cheap.

Karen,

Your plan to fly from the west coast, arrive at LHR, take the Tube to King's Cross and then East Coast Rail to Edinburgh is going to be exhausting and stressful and likely not a "happy" travel experience, especially after a long international flight. If there's a "hitch" at any point in the sequence (ie: your flight is late and you miss the train you've booked), the stress will be magnified.

If at all possible, my suggestion would be the same one that Tim mentioned. Since you'll be at the airport anyway, the easiest option would be a regional connector to Edinburgh. I've travelled that same route and even that can be tiring if the layover at LHR is lengthy, but it's less tiring than travel by train. Both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic appear to have cheap flights on that route. My trip was booked via code share flights with Air Canada, so I wasn't concerned about the costs or connection details from LHR to EDI. There's a convenient Shuttle Bus from the airport in Edinburgh to Waverley Station.

Good luck and happy travels!

Having done virtually the same thing in August, I am qualified to tell you it certainly can be done. And the train is infinitely more relaxing than yet another flight. In my case, I took a bus from my town over two hours to Chicago, then flew to LHR, arriving at 7 a.m. No wait at all at immigration, then I took the train to King's Cross. I didn't bother with an oyster card, since I only needed to get to King's Cross, I wasn't staying in London. A single ticket was 5.50 GBP, if I recall correctly. I then walked down to Euston for my 5 hr train to Glasgow (and onward from there to Balloch, on Loch Lomond). The ride in on the tube was an hour, and my train was at 1:30, so I had plenty of time to walk to the other station, get some lunch, and poke around before boarding. No security hassles, and I snoozed a bit on the train. I bought my ticket from Virgin Trains, who charge no credit card transaction fee, and they can mail your tickets to you in advance.

So after digging a bit on the East Coast train website under Super Off Peak fares and rules, still a bit unclear.
The day we are arriving in London is a Sunday. It appears that trains on Sundays have Super Off peak fares all day. So here are a couple more questions:

1. Please confirm that all day Sunday is off peak.
   Super fare rules on website states: "Most East Coast Off-Peak tickets (code 3V) do not allow travel before 09.30 Monday-Friday. Time restrictions do not apply on Saturdays, Sundays or Bank Holidays."
2. It appears that we could purchase super off peak tickets in advance, London to Edinburgh, and not have them tied to any particular train, providing our route and day doesn't change. Is this correct? Off peak fare states: "Valid via any permitted route. Valid on off-peak services by the route and Train Operator shown. Valid for 1 day only"
3. If we reserve seats in advance, then when we obtain tickets from a kiosk, can we select seats on an alternative train?
4. Both East Coast and Virgin have trains from London to Edinburgh- are the Super off peak fares good with either company? So if on the day of travel, the website only shows 6 trains available as Super Off Peak (at a higher price), as long as I'm traveling during off peak times with my pre-purchased tickets, we can hop on any train?

Sorry for my confusion, but riding trains isn't something we get a lot of practice with on the west coast.

1.> yes.

2.> yes. "Any permitted" means any authorized route. There used to be a very thick pink book that I had to know inside out with all the permitted routes - this was not available to the general public. What it boils down to is you have to travel in a (railway defined) straight line, and cannot backtrack, proceeding in the most direct way to your destination.

A lot of this is like telling you how to make sausage. There's a lot you won't want to see. But you have asked very specific questions and making sense out of the British railway regulations is not particularly simple.

You need to remember that all of British Rail is now privatized, from the rails and rocks to the overhead wires and everything inbetween. So interesting quirks come up. The more freedom a passenger has, the more expensive the ticket is likely to be. The more tied down a passenger is the cheaper the ticket can be. You can't take a ticket on Southwest in the States and use it on Delta. Here you can't use a ticket for East Coast and use it on Virgin. Or, you can but it will cost a lot more - it is called an intra available or Any Route ticket and is much more expensive. It would not be a Super Saver it would be an Anytime ticket - the most expensive.

Each Operating Company (there are around 26 of them) has its own rules about Super Savers. You quoted some of the East Coast ones. You will find Virgin Super Saver rules much more restrictive. BUT - Virgin do operate a cheap First Class Weekend Upgrade for not much money on top of a normal ticket, but you get very few perks on a weekend. Dunno about EC.

So when you have a rule like you quoted, "Valid on off-peak services by the route and Train Operator shown" that means only that operator (EC or Virgin) and the specified route on the ticket. EC tickets may well say (I haven't seen one recently) down at the bottom where routes are shown, "via Doncaster" or some other EC only station to specify EC, and it will probably say "EC ONLY" on it. Only if it said ANY PERMITTED under route could you go over to the slower Virgin service out of Euston Station.

3.> dunno. Doubt it. You would lose your first reservations and have to make new ones. Shouldn't be an issue.

4.> see the answer to 2 above.

One more thing to keep in mind is that the Super Off-Peak tickets sold through the East Coast website may be discounted compared with the walk-up price and are only valid on East Coast. See if it says 'web only fare'. This discount can be significant. The walk-up SSS price available at the station is £125.70.

I agree with the advice to fly to Edinburgh from LHR. I would look for flights 3-4 hours after landing from your home. You may have to change terminals for the second flight, so allow time for that.