I'm all for people being allowed to research all of those things. It's the "shopping around" argument, as mentioned above.
But to shop around, you need to have all the prices. Keeping some prices a closed secret, as we are asked to do on this forum, does not allow others to use them and shop around for themselves.
There are no secret fares.
Every fare is available to everyone either through Avantix Traveller or through BRFares. The Routeing Guide is available to everyone and details of the routes you may take are part of the National Rail Conditions of Travel.
It’s up to you how much or little time you out into research and piecing it all together. When I joined the forum in 2011 I had no idea about fares, since then I’ve spent thousands of hours researching what’s available. This has given me a really good understanding of what sort of fares I can use and when. There’s absolutely nothing stopping anyone from doing anything I’ve done.
I’d actually argue that while rail fares are complex (and given the size of the network they always will be), there is far more transparency about rail fares than almost any other industry:
You’ll be hard pressed to find out how much a bus fare is - I’m not aware of anywhere that they’re published.
Airline flights - again, there is little or no transparency.
Hotel rooms - again, no transparency.
I could go on….
There is no rule on the forum that says that certain fares must be kept secret. The problem is historically when good value fares have been publicised on the forum they tend to get ‘fixed’ very quickly. This defeats the object of publicising them in the first place.
We do run an extensive range of events like meals, walks and fares workshops across the country where these sort of things tend to get discussed. There is no closed shop about these events whatsoever, they are open to anyone and I’d encourage you to come along to an event if you’re interested in learning more.