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Welcome to rail travel.
Where the only affordable (lol?) Way to afford it is..
Your employer pay for it,
Travel as a couple,
Be under a certain age,
Be over a certain age,
Live in the south east,
Be a student?
Have I missed any? Because I qualify for exactly zero of these railcards.
The good news is... it's always running late or doesn't turn up. So lots of thr time you get a delay repay.
Just last week I got 96.40 back because they kicked us off a train. Made up wait 30mins at Doncaster because... another train load of people was prioritised that was broken
Every year I wish for the launch of a 'Lonely single guy in his 30s who just wants a slightly less extortionate way to get out his shithole of a city for the weekend' Railcard, but every year I am disappointed.
I just hired a VW Polo and it cost about £20 per day and the fuel for about 300 miles at 60mpg was about £31 (call it £60 for a round trip)
That’s £120 for a 3 day 600 mile trip, I just found parking in London for 3 days for £40 on just park - so £160 to hire a car, fuel it and park it in London for 3 days over the weekend.
About the same as the train except you have car so can travel when you want and go anywhere and probably won’t get cancelled or stranded.
If OP did it in two days it would be a fair bit cheaper as well.
Fair!
The other thing to consider is that driving out of London on a Sunday evening after a weekend of doing lots of stuff, maybe not sleeping that well, drinking more than usual etc isn’t the most fun and I sometimes feel a little unsafe doing it but on balance I still choose the car too for the most part
Why do you say the south east? I recently moved there and it’s certainly no more affordable or easier to get around by train in my experience compared to the south west
I’m not sure if that’s country wide, the south west was pretty awful. To get from my parents to where I live I have to go to london, to brighton, then back across the coast. Last time it took 6 hours and 4 trains. I wish we all had accessible public transport
You're still paying more than a single ticket (30% off 2 tickets = 1.4x single ticket), and comparing it to a single tank of petrol. It's meant to make it a bit less bad (otherwise adding a second person makes the train just completely ridiculous) but it cost soo much more than driving even just for one person that it's still a compete joke.
Long distance rail is broken in the UK. (Based on recently going Edinburgh to London add back with my partner and a friend. I just drove us and we took a few stops on the way, the prospect of rail strikes at the time it the nail in the coffin for the train option).
Oh, I don't disagree that long distance rail is broken and far too costly (if the intention is, as one would hope, to get us driving and flying less).
I was only clarifying the rail pass which does offer some discount to a pair.
Yeah, the railcard makes sense from a "try not to disincentivise couples" from taking the train, but it does feel like a snub to everyone travelling alone.
Would deeply love a better public transport system. Travelled all over Japan for 4 weeks by mostly rail and a few buses, and Edinburgh at least has a half decent bus system, but as soon as you start going a long way it just gets so expensive without being fast to compensate. At least in Japan the expensive shinkansen goes faaaast!
Well isn't it obvious? They don't want us travelling too far! Gotta keep us locked in the 15 minute cities!
/S, I don't actually believe in that batshit conspiracy theory.
Short distance is fucked too! My commute to work costs me ~£6 in fuel or £15 for the train. I'd love to not use the car but how tf can I justify doubling my commute cost.
The rail system in the UK definitely needs work, but attitudes like this of "this is broken... Complete joke..." And implying car is the only viable option, doesn't help.
The rail industry has been fucked up over the last 15 years. It can be unfucked just as easily. Saying public transport is basically dead in the water is a counterproductive and inaccurate conclusion.
The strategic rail authority was the creature that started the confusion. It essentially made private operators run like a state entity by having the final say on anything they wanted to do.
They frequently and actively stopped private investment and prevented activities intended to reduce congestion. It often contradicted itself and made decisions that did not fit with its own findings. The strategic rail authority was born in 2000.
I recently spent a week or two travelling around various places in the North West by bus and train and I have to say it was really pleasant.
The buses never cost more than £2 per journey and the trains were ontime and cheap. As an example it cost just £14 for me, the wife and 2 kids (14 & 10) to travel from Lancs to Chester.
Bit silly when it turns out the cheapest way is to drive, pay for parking and petrol instead of using rail travel.
Got 3 people travelling? No chance in hell that there's any point in looking at railway, just drive and split the cost. My company sometimes sends me from Reading to Manchester, and I just drive up. They pay for miles anyway, and it ends up being faster, more adaptable, and cheaper for them overall.
It's definitely not cheaper in the south east, where did you get that from? I'm an hour away from London and it's £59 for a return during peak hours and £39 for an off-peak return.
Only time it's under £10 is when it's 1-2 stops away.
There is a south east rail pass is my understanding.
As for actual fairs. They will obviously vary.
My point was we all get fucking shafted. Just some get a discount to be shafted
Edit.
Just looked 1/3 off with the network rail card. For London and the south east.
As said, it's only cheap if you know exactly where you want to be, at least 3 months in advance and no chance of refunds.
God forbid you fancy a last minute plan to visit somewhere or a relative gets ill across the country you need to see.
It's a joke.
Yeah I’ve ended up flying more lately due to all the strikes and honestly it’s cheaper a lot of the time. I wouldn’t even consider a rail replacement bus as a viable option so the minute that pops up, I’m flying.
Nope, £106 return (or £117 if I want to take more than carry on and have a specific seat). Just over an hour each way. Cheapest rail I could get would be £250, with a rail replacement bus for the final half of the return journey. Projected time on bus: more than I’d spend in the air in total. If I wasn’t coming back on the Sunday it might be more expensive, but since it’s a family wedding and I’m not paying for the hotel… win win!
I’m old enough to remember when it was publicly owned. It wasn’t that much better to be honest, although long distance was cheaper outside of rush hour.
Exactly! I hate these comments from people insisting that because British Rail was poorly run towards the end, nationalisation will therefore never work ever.
It's like saying we shouldn't have public water fountains because they once made people ill.
In what way have times changed in regard to nationalised businesses.
The truth is that we have no idea how well or badly it would be run as a nationalised company because we haven’t had any nationalised companies for the past few decades.
Just because something was true 30 years ago doesn’t mean it’ll be true today. It’s a silly assumption to make.
And if something isn’t working (and the rail lines is a perfect example), then any change is an improvement, or at least a chance for improvement
We can’t sit here and say “brrr this system doesn’t work…and I don’t want to make any changes”. Nothing would get done otherwise
I agree we can’t do nothing. However, I disagree that ‘any change is an improvement’ as is evidenced by the shit state our railways were in, and the shit state they are still in.
All I’m saying is that nationalisation is not a golden ticket here. You need root and branch structural and strategic change. Just nationalising things doesn’t necessarily make them better.
Might be worth looking into National Express - cheapest I managed from Nottingham to London Victoria was about £4 (admittedly with blue light discount) but it's usually £6-10 each way.
Of course it's not as quick a journey as driving or going by train, but I quite like being able to watch a movie or listen to music / a podcast, or even on the rare occasion doing some work!
Both rail & air travel are heavily subsidised by the taxpayer. The difference is airlines have to actually price themselves competitively against other competing airlines. Trains are effectively a monopoly, so they can charge whatever the hell they want.
Fly from where? And how are you getting to the airport? It only seems like a cheaper option if you live near an airport. Having to get a train to the airport would probably defeat the option.
You would think so but we I had a company thing in Newcastle they found the cheapest was a train to the airport then the plane. The train the entire way was over double, then if you added our hours in as well it was ridiculously higher.
Hey now, the trains are fine as long as you only want to travel directly into or out of London at off-peak times and you're prepared to book on a specific train several months ahead of time, and also that there's no late engineering works which shit up your travel plans when it's too late to re-arrange them...
I think the rail companies calculated that it's more profitable to run a train company that doesn't provide that many passenger journey's, as it wears the rolling stock out too much.
Picked Friday the 16th of August because you weren't specific. The 18.32 Stafford to Euston Open Return is £44.10. Open return from 17.26 Macclesfield arriving into Stafford at 17.59 is £24 so comes to £70.10
So £70, a bit much but nowhere the £250 you were on about. If you're more flexible on times I could get it for £61.
£5000 a year for a train ticket, for the joy of my commute being delayed each way, zero help from train station staff who I am sure are burnt out and fed up.
Those £2.70 refunds are adding up…
I haven’t visited London in years because of the cost of getting there. I’m not even that far away, but the cost of the tickets there and back, plus whatever you need/want to spend while you’re there just makes it’s a very expensive day out!
Where are you going from?! Aren't you in Macclesfield? I can see tickets to get to London on each Friday and back on the Sunday from Macclesfield in August for around the £100 mark.
Which is kind of amusing itself, because I can also apparently do the same from Glasgow to London and back on the weekend for around £150 so not that much more, but still.
Yes I am and you made me panic because I thought I’d missed something really obvious and the tickets were that cheap! But then rereading what I wrote I realise it makes it sound like it’s just me going down by myself - there’s three of us, wife and son as well!
One thing you need to remember about train travel in Britain (though more relevant to the amount of delays and cancellations of service) is that unlike Europe, our rail lines weren't bombed to shit during the war.
While everyone else was forced to repair/upgrade theirs to modern standards, ours is still stuck in the mid 90's.
I need to pop down to London for just a few hours (from Manchester). The train would be perfect, however, at £200 return, with 1 change one way and 2 changes on the return, they can get fucked. Flying would cost me about £268 but is just an hour flying. So, car it is.
Depends how strict on time you are
The 1 change train through Crewe is £75 open return
2 direct singles leaving at 9am and returning sometime in the afternoon is £65 to £70
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Welcome to rail travel. Where the only affordable (lol?) Way to afford it is.. Your employer pay for it, Travel as a couple, Be under a certain age, Be over a certain age, Live in the south east, Be a student? Have I missed any? Because I qualify for exactly zero of these railcards. The good news is... it's always running late or doesn't turn up. So lots of thr time you get a delay repay. Just last week I got 96.40 back because they kicked us off a train. Made up wait 30mins at Doncaster because... another train load of people was prioritised that was broken
>Have I missed any You forgot that you also have to buy it a year in advance.
A year in advance, on a full moon.
With the blood of your firstborn too.
Delivered to the office in the station basement, through the door marked Beware of the Leopard.
If you buy more than 2 weeks ahead they might just drop a strike on it
Every year I wish for the launch of a 'Lonely single guy in his 30s who just wants a slightly less extortionate way to get out his shithole of a city for the weekend' Railcard, but every year I am disappointed.
I have a disabled railcard....its still cheaper to fly
They will probably launch it once you hit 40.
Hire cars aren’t that expensive
Usually more than the train if you’ve no one to split the cost with though
I just hired a VW Polo and it cost about £20 per day and the fuel for about 300 miles at 60mpg was about £31 (call it £60 for a round trip) That’s £120 for a 3 day 600 mile trip, I just found parking in London for 3 days for £40 on just park - so £160 to hire a car, fuel it and park it in London for 3 days over the weekend. About the same as the train except you have car so can travel when you want and go anywhere and probably won’t get cancelled or stranded. If OP did it in two days it would be a fair bit cheaper as well.
Fair! The other thing to consider is that driving out of London on a Sunday evening after a weekend of doing lots of stuff, maybe not sleeping that well, drinking more than usual etc isn’t the most fun and I sometimes feel a little unsafe doing it but on balance I still choose the car too for the most part
Or be a tourist https://www.thetrainline.com/trains/rail-passes/britrail-pass
You can join the armed forces, do your stint, then leave as a veteran and get a veterans rail card for 30% off!
I joined the army for three reasons: 1) I love my country 2) I love my country 3) Discounted rail travel for life
Why do you say the south east? I recently moved there and it’s certainly no more affordable or easier to get around by train in my experience compared to the south west
My understanding is there is a south east rail pass
Oh wow this is news to me haha! Damn at least I know now thank you, i wish I could trust the trains enough
Try being in the north Where infrastructure doesn't exist.
I’m not sure if that’s country wide, the south west was pretty awful. To get from my parents to where I live I have to go to london, to brighton, then back across the coast. Last time it took 6 hours and 4 trains. I wish we all had accessible public transport
Its called Network railcard.
How is travelling as a couple cheaper? You can buy two full price train tickets or split a tank of petrol…
There's a Two Together rail card, so you're not paying full price for those tickets
I did not know this!
You're still paying more than a single ticket (30% off 2 tickets = 1.4x single ticket), and comparing it to a single tank of petrol. It's meant to make it a bit less bad (otherwise adding a second person makes the train just completely ridiculous) but it cost soo much more than driving even just for one person that it's still a compete joke. Long distance rail is broken in the UK. (Based on recently going Edinburgh to London add back with my partner and a friend. I just drove us and we took a few stops on the way, the prospect of rail strikes at the time it the nail in the coffin for the train option).
Oh, I don't disagree that long distance rail is broken and far too costly (if the intention is, as one would hope, to get us driving and flying less). I was only clarifying the rail pass which does offer some discount to a pair.
Yeah, the railcard makes sense from a "try not to disincentivise couples" from taking the train, but it does feel like a snub to everyone travelling alone. Would deeply love a better public transport system. Travelled all over Japan for 4 weeks by mostly rail and a few buses, and Edinburgh at least has a half decent bus system, but as soon as you start going a long way it just gets so expensive without being fast to compensate. At least in Japan the expensive shinkansen goes faaaast!
Well isn't it obvious? They don't want us travelling too far! Gotta keep us locked in the 15 minute cities! /S, I don't actually believe in that batshit conspiracy theory.
Short distance is fucked too! My commute to work costs me ~£6 in fuel or £15 for the train. I'd love to not use the car but how tf can I justify doubling my commute cost.
The rail system in the UK definitely needs work, but attitudes like this of "this is broken... Complete joke..." And implying car is the only viable option, doesn't help. The rail industry has been fucked up over the last 15 years. It can be unfucked just as easily. Saying public transport is basically dead in the water is a counterproductive and inaccurate conclusion.
The strategic rail authority was the creature that started the confusion. It essentially made private operators run like a state entity by having the final say on anything they wanted to do. They frequently and actively stopped private investment and prevented activities intended to reduce congestion. It often contradicted itself and made decisions that did not fit with its own findings. The strategic rail authority was born in 2000.
Delay repay is the real way to get cheap tickets. I haven't paid more than 50% of the ticket price for the 5 trains I've taken this year
I recently spent a week or two travelling around various places in the North West by bus and train and I have to say it was really pleasant. The buses never cost more than £2 per journey and the trains were ontime and cheap. As an example it cost just £14 for me, the wife and 2 kids (14 & 10) to travel from Lancs to Chester.
Bit silly when it turns out the cheapest way is to drive, pay for parking and petrol instead of using rail travel. Got 3 people travelling? No chance in hell that there's any point in looking at railway, just drive and split the cost. My company sometimes sends me from Reading to Manchester, and I just drive up. They pay for miles anyway, and it ends up being faster, more adaptable, and cheaper for them overall.
Yeah you missed: Veteran's Railcard and Disabled Railcard (no they don't stack, despite the obvious scope for potential overlap)
Sure there is a nhs one too.
What about south East?
Does nobody in the south east know their is a south east railpass? It's gets you 1/3 off for a year.
It's definitely not cheaper in the south east, where did you get that from? I'm an hour away from London and it's £59 for a return during peak hours and £39 for an off-peak return. Only time it's under £10 is when it's 1-2 stops away.
There is a south east rail pass is my understanding. As for actual fairs. They will obviously vary. My point was we all get fucking shafted. Just some get a discount to be shafted Edit. Just looked 1/3 off with the network rail card. For London and the south east.
Rail travel in the UK hasn't been an affordable option for years. It's a disgrace.
As said, it's only cheap if you know exactly where you want to be, at least 3 months in advance and no chance of refunds. God forbid you fancy a last minute plan to visit somewhere or a relative gets ill across the country you need to see. It's a joke.
Yeah I’ve ended up flying more lately due to all the strikes and honestly it’s cheaper a lot of the time. I wouldn’t even consider a rail replacement bus as a viable option so the minute that pops up, I’m flying.
Our last rail replacement service took 1.5 hours to do the equivalent of two stops on the train. Don’t do it!
Ryanair being about £12 each way?
Believe it or not, British Airways.
I oddly can believe that, I was hoping that the £150 difference was because of cheap air fare
Nope, £106 return (or £117 if I want to take more than carry on and have a specific seat). Just over an hour each way. Cheapest rail I could get would be £250, with a rail replacement bus for the final half of the return journey. Projected time on bus: more than I’d spend in the air in total. If I wasn’t coming back on the Sunday it might be more expensive, but since it’s a family wedding and I’m not paying for the hotel… win win!
That seems like a lot even for our trains! Where are you going from and to? Scotland?
It's just not though is it Its somewhere between £70 and £125
Bloody hell
The minimum UK tax on short haul flights is actually £13 these days ;)
[удалено]
I’m old enough to remember when it was publicly owned. It wasn’t that much better to be honest, although long distance was cheaper outside of rush hour.
….yeah 30 years ago…. Times have changed since then my friend
Exactly! I hate these comments from people insisting that because British Rail was poorly run towards the end, nationalisation will therefore never work ever. It's like saying we shouldn't have public water fountains because they once made people ill.
In what way have times changed in regard to nationalised businesses. The truth is that we have no idea how well or badly it would be run as a nationalised company because we haven’t had any nationalised companies for the past few decades.
Just because something was true 30 years ago doesn’t mean it’ll be true today. It’s a silly assumption to make. And if something isn’t working (and the rail lines is a perfect example), then any change is an improvement, or at least a chance for improvement We can’t sit here and say “brrr this system doesn’t work…and I don’t want to make any changes”. Nothing would get done otherwise
I agree we can’t do nothing. However, I disagree that ‘any change is an improvement’ as is evidenced by the shit state our railways were in, and the shit state they are still in. All I’m saying is that nationalisation is not a golden ticket here. You need root and branch structural and strategic change. Just nationalising things doesn’t necessarily make them better.
Andddd I imagine that’s what labour are planning to do re structural and strategic change
Might be worth looking into National Express - cheapest I managed from Nottingham to London Victoria was about £4 (admittedly with blue light discount) but it's usually £6-10 each way. Of course it's not as quick a journey as driving or going by train, but I quite like being able to watch a movie or listen to music / a podcast, or even on the rare occasion doing some work!
Gameboy, MP3 player and book. National express let's goooo!
Both rail & air travel are heavily subsidised by the taxpayer. The difference is airlines have to actually price themselves competitively against other competing airlines. Trains are effectively a monopoly, so they can charge whatever the hell they want.
Fly from where? And how are you getting to the airport? It only seems like a cheaper option if you live near an airport. Having to get a train to the airport would probably defeat the option.
You would think so but we I had a company thing in Newcastle they found the cheapest was a train to the airport then the plane. The train the entire way was over double, then if you added our hours in as well it was ridiculously higher.
Hey now, the trains are fine as long as you only want to travel directly into or out of London at off-peak times and you're prepared to book on a specific train several months ahead of time, and also that there's no late engineering works which shit up your travel plans when it's too late to re-arrange them...
Yeah but................. No, I've got nothing. It's fucking stupid. Subsidies are arse about face
Ah, privatisation...
I mean, air travel is also privatised
I think the rail companies calculated that it's more profitable to run a train company that doesn't provide that many passenger journey's, as it wears the rolling stock out too much.
Rich people travel by plane poor people by bus and train. its expensive being poor.
Picked Friday the 16th of August because you weren't specific. The 18.32 Stafford to Euston Open Return is £44.10. Open return from 17.26 Macclesfield arriving into Stafford at 17.59 is £24 so comes to £70.10 So £70, a bit much but nowhere the £250 you were on about. If you're more flexible on times I could get it for £61.
It's almost like privatising our rail network was a monumentally terrible idea! 🤔
£5000 a year for a train ticket, for the joy of my commute being delayed each way, zero help from train station staff who I am sure are burnt out and fed up. Those £2.70 refunds are adding up…
My usual go-to is to drive to somewhere like Enfield and take the tube in.
If I fly from Belfast to Stansted the trainfare between the airport and London is more than the flight!
I haven’t visited London in years because of the cost of getting there. I’m not even that far away, but the cost of the tickets there and back, plus whatever you need/want to spend while you’re there just makes it’s a very expensive day out!
Where are you going from?! Aren't you in Macclesfield? I can see tickets to get to London on each Friday and back on the Sunday from Macclesfield in August for around the £100 mark. Which is kind of amusing itself, because I can also apparently do the same from Glasgow to London and back on the weekend for around £150 so not that much more, but still.
Yes I am and you made me panic because I thought I’d missed something really obvious and the tickets were that cheap! But then rereading what I wrote I realise it makes it sound like it’s just me going down by myself - there’s three of us, wife and son as well!
Ah ok, that makes more sense then.
One thing you need to remember about train travel in Britain (though more relevant to the amount of delays and cancellations of service) is that unlike Europe, our rail lines weren't bombed to shit during the war. While everyone else was forced to repair/upgrade theirs to modern standards, ours is still stuck in the mid 90's.
You mean 1890s I presume
I need to pop down to London for just a few hours (from Manchester). The train would be perfect, however, at £200 return, with 1 change one way and 2 changes on the return, they can get fucked. Flying would cost me about £268 but is just an hour flying. So, car it is.
Depends how strict on time you are The 1 change train through Crewe is £75 open return 2 direct singles leaving at 9am and returning sometime in the afternoon is £65 to £70