Reply to: Fighting the machine...

[BoredBloke]

That's just nuts. It's the same train?!!


As for a plan B - I can't be ar£$D it took me 3 hours to suss out one route alone, how many possible journeys are there in the UK???

Not that many combinations actually - presumably it would work like a autoroute/sat nav to determine the route and then get all the possible prices. There are only a few high speed lines

[Scary]

I just tried doing this for my day return from London to Carlisle. It looked like it might be cheaper, but I lost the will to live and gave up, so congratulations on seeing it through.

Aren't there message boards where people who get off on doing this kind of thing could help you out?

[Churchill]

Made it...

Edinburgh to Cambridge £24, same train most of the way as my previous £240 fare.

Was not challenged once yet my more expensive ticket always got the conductor up in arms cause the Scot Executive package was not recognised.

Funny this, it's perfectly acceptable to do this with a train ticket, but when one uses similarly legal means to mitigate their tax bill...

[scooterscot]

Made it...

Edinburgh to Cambridge £24, same train most of the way as my previous £240 fare.

Was not challenged once yet my more expensive ticket always got the conductor up in arms cause the Scot Executive package was not recognised.

[scooterscot]

That's what gets you in the end, you get frustrated and just buy the one ticket.

It should not be like this...

[Doggy Styles]

I just tried doing this for my day return from London to Carlisle. It looked like it might be cheaper, but I lost the will to live and gave up, so congratulations on seeing it through.

[scooterscot]

I can't find any ticket between Peterborough and Edinburgh for £16. Is this fare on Thetrainline? If so these tickets can not be used in conjunction with other tickets however, when I do so; I get off and back on the train!

East coast website.

Here it is £16 for 300 miles...

https://tickets.eastcoast.co.uk/ec/e...=NoModifyGuest

[OrangeHopper]

How many miles can you do on £47 of petrol?

[Ardesco]

The next step is to buy 10 season tickets to ensure maximum savings potential

[centurian]

Perfectly legal - been around for a few years - called split ticketing. The only condition is that the train must stop at the stations you split your ticket on (which it will if you are using advance purchase tickets for specific trains).

It occurs because train companies charge to meet expectations of people to pay. People won't pay extortionate prices for short trips, but are more prepared to stump up the cash for longer trips.

Also if you buy over the counter/phone, they must sell you any combination of tickets you ask for. But if you ask for a "return to ...", they will sell you exactly what you asked for - even though there are cheaper options available.


As train companies notice that more and more of these combinations are being sold, they tend to close down the options, usually by increasing the shorter distance fares, figuring it's better to lose a few short journey fares than suffer a large scale loss of their core fares.

[Paddy]

Ok I've spent some hours figuring this out, 3 of them to be exact.

Last week my return to Cambridge cost me £264 on the East Coast line.

My matrix of sorts in excel records the cost station to station all the way from Edinburgh to Cambridge and back again.

I've just gone to the station and printed off 10 tickets at the machine (it took the machine a minute and a queue built up behind me fairly quickly as I waited)

Its cost me £47!!

And I'll be using the same train as I did last week

One section of the journey I have a ticket for a price of £16 from Peterborough to Edinburgh!

This system is MAD

At Paddyville, stations near London are considerably cheaper but also stations further away are cheaper to travel to London. SW Trains specifically forbid boarding and alighting at any stations other that what’s on the ticket (cheap tickets). So much for the free market.

I can't find any ticket between Peterborough and Edinburgh for £16. Is this fare on Thetrainline? If so these tickets can not be used in conjunction with other tickets however, when I do so; I get off and back on the train!

[NickFitz]

I bow humbly to your better knowlege and/or research skills.

Google's

[RichardCranium]

He isn't making one journey and breaking it, he is making multiple journeys all of which happen to be served by the same train.

In fact, this technique is frequently suggested as an effective way of cutting the cost of train travel

I still disagree. He is artifically breaking a journey for no other purpose that to avoid paying the full fare for that journey.

there is nothing in the National Rail Conditions of Carriage to forbid it - a fact even ATOC accept.

I bow humbly to your better knowlege and/or research skills.

Although I wish they had quoted their source for the unattributed statement:

It’s perfectly allowed within the National Rail Conditions of Carriage, and has been confirmed by the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC). The

[NickFitz]

I disagree with your interpretation of:asAlthough the intention of the original wording was to stop you using a one-way ticket as a wy to visit every town on the route, that is not what it says.

He is breaking his journey without making use of a connecting train. He is arriving at an intermediate station and is then failing to use a connecting train and is, instead, travelling on a different ticket on the same train to complete his journey.

I would expect a court to recognise his journey is between the extreme ends of his trip on the railway network. He is not even getting off the train, and if he did, he would immediately get back on. So he is clearly using unnecessary complexity to evade paying the full fare for the journey by abusing the flexibility of the ticket system. That is, he is pretending to break his journey so as to avoid paying a larger fare and this is apparent by his having neither need nor desire to use a connecting train. And I would not be at all surprised at a ticket inspector using that argument to demand more money, nor at a train company taking the matter to court.

(But I also think ScooterScot should go ahead and do it anyway.)

He isn't making one journey and breaking it, he is making multiple journeys all of which happen to be served by the same train.

In fact, this technique is frequently suggested as an effective way of cutting the cost of train travel, as there is nothing in the National Rail Conditions of Carriage to forbid it - a fact even ATOC accept.

The one potential problem would be the seat change at Newcastle: a particularly mardy inspector could swoop at that point, as the Ts & Cs clearly state that "Where applicable, you must travel in the Class and reserved seat(s) shown on the ticket(s)." The safest thing is to move to the correct seat, as otherwise the ticket is technically invalid.

Oh, of course the other catch is that the train must actually be scheduled to stop at each station: get that wrong and you're screwed.

[RichardCranium]

Edit: * What ScooterScot did is kosher. See NF's link below. *

I disagree with your interpretation of:

You may not ... break and resume ... your journey at any intermediate station except to change to/from connecting trains

as

• "Break and resume": one is not allowed to get off at B and then resume the journey on a later train to C, except for the purpose of changing to a connecting train.

Although the intention of the original wording was to stop you using a one-way ticket as a wy to visit every town on the route, that is not what it says.

He is breaking his journey without making use of a connecting train. He is arriving at an intermediate station and is then failing to use a connecting train and is, instead, travelling on a different ticket on the same train to complete his journey.

I would expect a court to recognise his journey is between the extreme ends of his trip on the railway network. He is not even getting off the train, and if he did, he would immediately get back on. So he is clearly using unnecessary complexity to evade paying the full fare for the journey by abusing the flexibility of the ticket system. That is, he is pretending to break his journey so as to avoid paying a larger fare and this is apparent by his having neither need nor desire to use a connecting train. And I would not be at all surprised at a ticket inspector using that argument to demand more money, nor at a train company taking the matter to court.

(But I also think ScooterScot should go ahead and do it anyway.)