Great Ticket Sale courtesy of Grant Shapps

[CyrusWuff]

Avanti and GWR, at least, are selling Rail Sale tickets already.

Euston - Birmingham: £8.00 Standard, £23 Standard Premium. No discount for "proper" First Class, of course.

Paddington - Exeter: £27 Standard, £50 First Class.

 

[yorkie]

As are West Midlands Trains.

Reading various articles that Grant Shapps has launched a rail ticket sale from Tuesday 19th April - for off peak travel.
When exactly will the prices become available on the system?
Is there a list of the specific journeys? Are they just 'headline routes' or are all tickets discounted?

Just selected journeys.

If you book through a split ticket provider, they should generally be able to identify which parts of the journey are discounted; you will still get a through itinerary as evidence of a contract for the whole journey.

 

[DelayRepay]

Sorry if it's already been posted, but there is a website here: https://greatbritishrailsale.nationalrail.co.uk/

Currently it's saying 'come back at 10am'.

 

[alistairlees]

I'll summarise what's happening:
- purchase between today and 2nd May
- travel between 25 April and 27 May (but almost every TOC will have "barred dates" - and you will have to look on each TOC website for these. Greater Anglia are barred every weekend I think!)
- for almost every TOC, only Standard Class Advance is available in the Rail Sale. The exceptions are: LNER (also includes 1st Class Advance), Avanti (also includes Standard Premium), GWR (also includes 1st Class Advance), Thameslink / Great Northern (Off-Peak only as they don't have any Advance fares) and c2c (Off-Peak only as they don't have any Advance fares)
- Merseyrail, Heathrow Express, Caledonian Sleeper, and London Overground / Underground are not included. I don't tink Lumo are either. It looks like TfW are participating, but I am not sure about Scotrail.
- now here's the catch: in all but a handful of cases, the only Advance fares that are included are "TOC only" and not "TOC & Connections". So if your journey involves two different TOCs, there will be no Rail Sale fares. This also means that there will be on cross-London Rail Sale fares. So it will be splitting heaven for many journeys.

 

[Andy Pacer]

- now here's the catch: in all but a handful of cases, the only Advance fares that are included are "TOC only" and not "TOC & Connections". So if your journey involves two different TOCs, there will be no Rail Sale fares. This also means that there will be on cross-London Rail Sale fares. So it will be splitting heaven for many journeys.

Also worth bearing in mind not to try and include your cross London journey, it will often work out cheaper to pay separately on the day for the tube ride (although if time permits I sometimes walk them depending on the distance)

I was looking at Leicester - Tiverton Parkway, if I try and go cross London it will give me a Rail Sale ticket from Leicester to St Pancras, but then a standard advance St Pancras to Tiverton Parkway.
Booking it as two separate (Leicester - St Pancras, Paddington - Tiverton Parkway) offered me Rail Sale ticket on both legs.

 

[Snow1964]

- now here's the catch: in all but a handful of cases, the only Advance fares that are included are "TOC only" and not "TOC & Connections". So if your journey involves two different TOCs, there will be no Rail Sale fares.

Thank you

Can you clarify if you can do a journey within a TOC that involves 2 trains, eg GWR, and what happens if only one of the trains has first class available

 

[alistairlees]

Thank you

Can you clarify if you can do a journey within a TOC that involves 2 trains, eg GWR,

Rail Sale tickets are available, e.g. from St Ives to London Paddington, as only one TOC is involved. This is assuming that an Advance flow already exists (Rail Sale Advance tickets are only being made available where Advance tickets already exist)

and what happens if only one of the trains has first class available

A Rail Sale 1st Class ticket should be available; only one leg needs to have 1st Class on it.

 

[Liam L]

As are West Midlands Trains.

Just been on there website and nothing is showing yet?
However some there fares for railsale are showing on GWR website

 

[yorkie]

Just been on there website and nothing is showing yet?
However some there fares for railsale are showing on GWR website

I got all mine from Trainsplit, which worked out which parts had availability.

e.g. Stafford to Coventry got me a sale fare to Rugby then a regular fare from there. I get one PDF for all tickets in the journey and a through itinerary as evidence of the contract (useful in case trains are retimed, cancelled or delayed)., so no disadvantage compared to a through ticket.

TOC websites won't do that; they simply charge the through fare, which is often very expensive.

 

[alistairlees]

BR Fares shows (and always has done) fares available for travel today. You can't travel on the sale fares until next week so it is unlikely they will appear before then (although of course it depends on how they are set up in the data).

Yes, apologies, in my earlier post I got confused between the quote date and the travel date. It was late at night!

 

[Tetchytyke]

TrainSplit have been selling them for a few days, probably by accident. I've picked up a £2.70 single from Victoria to Gatwick for next week and booked it last Wednesday.

 

[Wallsendmag]

TrainSplit have been selling them for a few days, I've picked up a £2.70 single from Victoria to Gatwick for next week and booked it last Wednesday.

Surely they shouldn't have been doing that

 

[alistairlees]

Surely they shouldn't have been doing that

Indeed, how could they - there should have been no availability

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Sorry if it's already been posted, but there is a website here: https://greatbritishrailsale.nationalrail.co.uk/

Currently it's saying 'come back at 10am'.

Timing out for me - probably too many people wanting to access the site at once.

 

[Howardh]

I can't get through to that website; is that the only place you book these tickets or can you do so direct from the TOC you want?

Edit; after 3 minutes wait the page has loaded so I'm hanging on to it....

 

[Andy Pacer]

I can't get through to that website; is that the only place you book these tickets or can you do so direct from the TOC you want?

Edit; after 3 minutes wait the page has loaded so I'm hanging on to it....

I've booked all of mine on Train Pal so far this morning.

 

[yorkie]

I can't get through to that website; is that the only place you book these tickets or can you do so direct from the TOC you want?

I wouldn't book through a TOC. I got mine on Trainsplit; the journeys I booked were:

• Stafford to Coventry (sale ticket available Stafford - Rugby)
• Coventry to Cardiff (sale tickets available Didcot - Swindon + Swindon-Cardiff)

If I had booked these with a TOC I'd have been charged a huge amount more.

 

[Haywain]

I wouldn't book through a TOC. I got mine on Trainsplit; the journeys I booked were:

• Stafford to Coventry (sale ticket available Stafford - Rugby)
• Coventry to Cardiff (sale tickets available Didcot - Swindon + Swindon-Cardiff)

If I had booked these with a TOC I'd have been charged a huge amount more.

Enough of the advertising!

 

[Deltic1961]

The press aren't looking at this "promotion" in a good light.

 

[yorkie]

Enough of the advertising!

It's not 'advertising' to point out that TOCs won't offer these fares for the through journey and to point out where I got them from. I don't work for them and am not advertising; if you think unauthorised advertising is occurring on the forum please use the report button (and make no mention of it on the forum), thanks.

The press aren't looking at this "promotion" in a good light.

I'm not surprised; it was all so predictable.

If you can link to, and quote from, any examples in your post that would be useful.

The Independent are fairly reserved and modest in their criticisms:

Half-price train tickets: How does it work and what’s the catch?

50 per cent discount applies on a relatively narrow range of tickets

www.independent.co.uk

Most tickets do not qualify,...

Looking at the way the offer is structured, it appears that connecting journeys will not qualify...

One million tickets may sound like a large number, but compared with the usual numbers of rail journeys in a 33-day spell (more than 160 million) it is tiny...

These are very valid points.

 

[alistairlees]

I can't get through to that website; is that the only place you book these tickets or can you do so direct from the TOC you want?

Edit; after 3 minutes wait the page has loaded so I'm hanging on to it....

You should be able to buy from any retailer, such as an independent retailer or a train operator. All have access to all of the same Rail Sale tickets - there are no differences.

 

[Liam L]

WMR website now selling them.

 

[Starmill]

I'm amazed that Grant Shapps is permitted to try to gain credit for this during an election purdah. I'm aware of a number of announcements and decisions that have to be held over until after the elections despite their subjects all being less politically contentious than the levels of train fares or the value for money of industry promotions.

It goes to show how out of date electoral rules are.

 

[Howardh]

Avanti are selling them already, just done Man/Eus

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Just before 1000 and RailSaletime, and the postman has just pushed the May Modern Railways through the letterbox, which includes progress review sections on HS2 and the Elizabeth line.
It's going to be a busy day...

 

[DanNCL]

Sorry if I've missed this, will railcard discounts apply on top of the discounts this sale offers, or will this be like some of the sales LNER have done in the past where the "sale" fares are entirely new promotional tickets not eligible for railcard discounts?

 

[Oscar M]

Sorry if I've missed this, will railcard discounts apply on top of the discounts this sale offers, or will this be like some of the sales LNER have done in the past where the "sale" fares are entirely new promotional tickets not eligible for railcard discounts?

They will apply.

 

[DanNCL]

They will apply.

Brilliant!

 

[mangyiscute]

does anyone know, if you buy an off peak ticket in the sale, is it valid for exchange and/or refund like how normal off peak tickets are?

 

[Howardh]

£31 return Manchester - Euston with r/c; advertised under the sale but not sure how much that's saving, looks about half. Can't seem to get hold of the bargain £6.20 offer! Anyhow it will do me.
Note the London/Brighton one is about £4 (single) with r/c but involves changing at Hove and taking the slow train from Victoria. However should be able to alight at preston park and take the bus which should chop a bit of time off.