We are 60 days out from the beginning of our train travel trips to three cities in Scotland and two cities in England. We have our senior rail card. Should we book a package multi city railpass or individual tickets with the senior rail card? Is there a savings by doing a package? We've been waiting for the tickets to become available. Should we wait a couple of weeks for them to all become available? Not sure how all this wonderful train travel works. Thank you for your train travel help.
Posted by
Lynnwood, Washington
8575 posts
How fun to have this trip to look forward to. You say that you already purchased senior railcards, so talking about railcard selection is a moot point. In order to know your best pricing options you need to price out your specific trips. There are some very knowledgeable and kind people on this forum. If you list the dates and destinations (from to) that you are planning, they can help give you an idea of the costs.
Posted by
Yorkshire
1299 posts
Impossible to know...
But having your senior passes will inevitably save you a pretty penny.
I am a habitual last minute traveller I rarely book until the day before on trips and travel after 9.30am where prices tend to be cheaper.
Occasionally a split ticketing app will throw out a much cheaper ticket than the National Rail site does ,even though its the same trains
Posted by
2469 posts
You need to state which cities you plan to visit and if possible the dates. Neither do you state where you are coming from - Europe - America? I say this because if you have not booked flights, an airport such as Edinburgh or Manchester might be more convenient/cheaper?
You can start by reading:>https://www.seat61.com/train-travel-in-britain.htm
Posted by
Lake District, England
6571 posts
It is a moot point now, but unless you intend to travel before 9.30am a Two Together Railcard (one railcard between you so £30 not £60) would have been better value.
The rail passes in Scotland have never been especially good value, even before the era of cheap Advance Tickets, so unless you want flexibility of trains rather than being tied to specific Advance booked trains a rail pass is unlikely to have worked.
Advance Tickets with a railcard, especially in Scotland, are very good value.
Personally I never book more than 14 to 28 days out and still get fantastic value Advance Fares. OK- I may not always get the total lead in cheapest tier of fares, but still always very cheap, so I would not be sweating about booking immediately.
The big decision for you to make is whether you want to be booking tickets for specific trains which you can't change (Advance Fares) or open tickets where you can decide on the day what time you want to travel- those are clearly more expensive (often a lot more so).
If open tickets then you barely need to be booking them ahead of time at all, as they can be purchased on the day at the station.
There are pros and cons to both approaches to ticketing,
Ironically, if wanting a rail pass and total flexibility it is possible that one of the Britrail passes may have been cheaper. But you don't get railcard reductions with them. They usually offer much better value than their UK equivalent rail passes, but now you have railcards you may as well just buy UK tickets with the railcards.
Posted by
Lake District, England
6571 posts
Re- the above I recognised the name so have just checked on your back posts.
You are doing EDI to INV to GLA to Liverpool to Windsor for London by train.
There is no railpass (Britrail or UK) which covers that itinerary. Nor is there a Scottish railpass of sensible value that covers the 3 cities.
So Advance Fares it seems to be from your earlier posts.
You may as well get the EDI to INV tickets now while waiting for INV to GLA to come out in a few days time. GLA to LPL should be available now (cheapest is likely to be on the direct Transpennine trains, but you never know if Avanti will have a better fare by changing at Preston or Wigan North Western).
Unless doing LPL to Windsor at a weekend (with shorter release times) those fares should be available now.
For GLA to LPL Transpennine do a very good 1st class service now (hot food with a dedicated steward)- a recent innovation. Senior Railcard also works on 1st class fares. May be worth looking at a little splurge for that journey.
GLA to Liverpool should be £10.20 to £18.15 each as a through Advance Fare booking now. Doing that as a 3 way split fare (GLA- Carlisle, Carlisle to Preston, Preston to Liverpool is usually £14.75 so a through fare is usually cheaper). First class should be about £28 on Transpennine.
Posted by
OP
London trip
42 posts
Thank you so much. Your info answered our questions. We can go ahead and book the advanced fares that have been released since we know our route and dates. We've been piecing our trip together after reading the many posts, and appreciate all the advice so kindly given. From LAX to London, to Edinburgh to Inverness, to Glasgow to Liverpool, to London to Windsor, to Heathrow to LAX, we are so excited about upcoming trip in mid September. Thank you again.
Posted by
2469 posts
York is on the London (King’s Cross) to Edinburgh line. You may like to consider staying a night or two? https://visityork.org
When in Liverpool. you might like to consider taking a day trip by train to nearby Chester - which is about 45 minutes away. For the 2 of you, it will cost about £12 return - pay on the day. Note that one route goes from Liverpool James Street station and is run by Merseyrail and the other from Lime Street which is operated by Transport for Wales trains - which are less frequent than Merseyrail. You must use the same service both ways with a return ticket. https://www.visitcheshire.com/chester