Ticket tricks to cut the cost of the train

Being an organised sort, you book your train ticket well in advance, using a popular website that looks around for the cheapest deals.

You need to be in the capital by 3pm at the latest, so the website suggests the 11.33am service, changing at Wolverhampton and then Stafford, arriving at Euston.

You are about to buy the tickets, but something is bothering you.

The asking price of £74.30, for a single ticket seems expensive. Surely there is a cheaper way to get there?

Well there is. Using exactly the same trains, along the same routes at the same times, using exactly the same website. The only difference is you buy two tickets rather than one.

It is a little-known secret that Stafford is one of the cheapest stations to travel from for long distance travel, and a ticket to London can be bought for just £8. Factor in an anytime ticket from Shrewsbury to Stafford for £16.70 – bizarrely, the 30-mile first leg of the trip costs more than double the 150-mile journey to the capital – and the cost is just £24.70, less than a third of the single-ticket price.

Earlier this month Transport Secretary Chris Grayling announced that rail fares would increase by 3.2 per cent from January, piling more pressure on the hard-pressed commuter following the 3.6 per cent rise this year.

Here we look offer some useful tips to save on costs:

Book early

Train operators sell a limited number of discounted tickets up to 12 weeks before a journey, sometimes at a fraction of the price of tickets bought on the day. Train operators are usually reluctant to give the details of these, but websites such as Trainline, Red Spotted Hanky and Virgin Train’s own site are useful for finding the cheapest deals.

Split your tickets

A large tin of beans is cheaper than two small ones, so logic would suggest that a long train journey would be cheaper than several shorter ones. However, in the arcane world of rail travel, the opposite is often true. Say, for example, you want to travel from Telford to Edinburgh about midday. A standard one-way ticket is £106.60, but if you use the website TrainSplit.co.uk the same journey is £44.20 – by purchasing three tickets, one from Telford to Wolverhampton, one from Wolverhampton to Crewe, and a third from Crewe to Edinburgh. The price includes a £10.20 charge from the website, which seems good value considering the savings available. Several other websites offer a similar service.

Get a railcard

Most of these apply to off-peak journeys, which means either after 10am or at weekends. Typically, they cost about £30, but if you are a regular traveller they can save up to a third of the price of your journeys. The young person’s railcard is open to those aged 16-25, and the senior railcard for those over 60.

Go for long-term season tickets.

If you need to commute every day, it’s cheaper to buy an annual season ticket rather than a weekly or monthly one. If you are struggling to stump up the cash up front, you could ask your employer for a loan to spread the cost. You may also consider applying for a nought per cent credit card. If this is not an option, there are specialist lenders such as CommuterClub.

Take advantage of offers

Earlier this year, Virgin Trains offered tickets to London for £5 and Glasgow for £11, for people travelling between April 3 and June 1.

Don’t forget the cost of parking.

Railway station car parks are convenient, but they can be expensive. There may often be a cheaper – or free – alternative nearby.

Make sure you claim refunds for delayed or cancelled trains.

At least £100 million worth of compensation goes unclaimed every year. Many operators will refund half your fare if your trains are delayed by more than half an hour, or a full refund on a single ticket if the delay is more than an hour.

Beat the system to get best value for money

Telford student Matthew Gabriel, 20, travels on the train almost every day, making the journey to his digs in Loughborough during term time, and to London where he works as an intern in the summer.

He says that for savvy customers, who know how to find the best deals, rail travel represents good value for money. But he says the cost of same-day travel is too expensive, and the quality of service varies greatly between the operators.

“In short, if everything goes well trains are good value for money. If you jump through all the hoops to get discounted tickets and everything runs as planned then it can be a good experience.

“If it doesn’t, normally the delay is major and disrupts your whole day. I also wish on-the-day tickets were not so expensive in case you needed to make an unplanned journey somewhere quite far.”

‘Us and them’

He says that while he finds that Virgin Trains provides the best service for travelling to London, its fares are too expensive, adding: “It really does create a class system, an ‘us and them’ mentality, with those who can afford go on the fast, clean Virgin trains, and those who can’t are on the London Northwestern services.

“I believe rail travel should be affordable for all and should not exclude the working class, providing them with the opportunity to have a day out somewhere new with their family, increasing their quality of life, especially in holiday periods such as now.”

He says he is aware of the tricks to get cheaper tickets, from buying early and splitting a trip into several tickets.

But he says it is a system that benefits those who travel frequently and who know how to work with the system.

“All in all, I find rail travel to be pleasant, you can mostly find a seat and these days trains are well facilitated and accommodating,” he says.

“But it can also be patchy, with considerable variation between the different operators.

“For example Arriva Trains Wales services have the heating on full blast on a 30 degree summer day and their toilets are most unpleasant, whereas with Virgin the trains are spotless.”