Cheap Train Tickets How to find hidden fares

The train ticketing system is a farce. Yet learn how to play they system with hidden tricks and you'll save a fortune.

This full step-by-step guide will show you how to slash the price with split tickets, buy at the right time, get early booking discounts last minute and much more.

Buy early, specifically 12 weeks early

Everyone knows book early and you can get cheaper fares, yet often these disappear quicker than empty seats on a commuter trip. Therefore to ensure a bargain, the key moment to start looking is about 12 weeks before (or four months for Eurostar).

This is because, contractually, Network Rail must have the timetable set 12 weeks in advance. Therefore train operators commonly, though not always, release cheap advance tickets shortly after.

It's sometimes not dead on 12 weeks though, often more like 10-11. To help, National Rail has a handy future travel chart, showing the latest date you can buy advance tickets for each train firm.

If you know when and where you want to go, there's a sneaky way to be first in the cheap tickets queue. The TheTrainline's* ticket alert system emails the moment cheap advance tickets for a specific journey come on sale (commonly the cheapest fares).

Get last-minute early booking discounts

Everyone knows advance train tickets are much cheaper, but many folks don't realise you can often buy advance tickets the night before or, occasionally, even on the way to the station. So the golden rule is:

Always check if advance tickets are still available, even if you're on the way to the station.

As proof of this, during one of my It Pays To Watch TV programmes, I was challenged to save a businessman who commutes to work by train most days as much money as I could. He usually only finds out his destination the day before, so just books at the station.

At 5pm I got him to call for a London-Sheffield train for the next morning. He'd have paid £147 on the day, but the night before, £64 advance tickets were still around. That was a stunning saving.

While ATOC's official policy is that advance tickets are only available up to 6pm the day before, a few train companies sell them even later.

Spend over £84/year? Consider a railcard

Railcards cut a third off the bill. Cards can be bought from the Railcard site and most are £28 per year or £65 for three years (works out at £21.66/year). So spend over £84 a year, even in just one trip, and it's cheaper.

Don't assume every journey is eligible for a railcard discount. Always check it out first, especially if travelling at peak times. The main cards:

This is for under-26s or full-time students of any age. Renew just before your 26th birthday to grab another year. The same applies to older cardholders about to finish uni.

This can be used on all tickets when one adult and a minimum of one under-16 travel together (borrowing a child for a day could save you money). The maximum is four adults and four children; adults get a third off, children 60%.

This one's for over-60s. Some local councils give discounts on the £28 cost of this card, so it's worth checking with your local council first. Use DirectGov's local council finder.

The Disabled Persons Railcard costs £20 for one year or £54 for three years. It cuts a third off your ticket and an adult companion’s, who doesn’t need to be a carer. See a full list of who qualifies.

The £28 Network Railcard for South East England gives a third off most rail fares for journeys in the Network Railcard area. Up to three adults can travel with you and get the discount, and up to four children (five to 15 years) save 60%. Do note that if you hold an annual season ticket or TFL travelcard for stations in the South East Network Railcard Area, you can get similar discounts under its 'gold' card scheme, so don't need to buy a railcard.

Season tickets for regular travellers

Regular rail users and commuters should consider annual season tickets. National Rail's season ticket calculator is a nifty little tool to help you work out the cost.

Note that the same routes often have multiple season ticket options; check all of these, as it can make a real difference. A standard 12-month Bristol to London season ticket is £10,000. Yet if you restrict your travel to the Warminster and Salisbury route, it's £7,028.

If you're getting a season ticket on a heavy commuter route, check if there are any split ticket options. It can be possible to save with two season tickets covering different journey legs.

It's well worth noting that annual season ticket or travelcards for the Network Railcard area in South East England give special perks. Holders of these 'gold cards get a third off trips for them and up to four adults within the Network Railcard area. They can also take up to four under-16s for £2 each.

How to grab the cheapest fares and book for less

There are more promotional train fares available than people realise. For the ultra-cheap deals you have to know where to look and be flexible.

For a regularly updated list of super-cheap train promos, vouchers, and codes, see the Cheap Train & Coach Deals index.

Also see National Rail for a full local promotions index, listing hundreds of regional special offers by train company. Offers change regularly and include everything from Kids for a Quid with Southeastern to first-class upgrades for mums-to-be with National Express East Anglia.

For Virgin Trains travel, use the Virgin farefinder where you could find super-cheap London to Birmingham singles from £7.50. London to Manchester and London to Liverpool singles start at £12. While these cheapies are findable on rail booking sites, they are far easier to spot on Virgin's farefinder.

The top UK train booking sites

There are five main sites for searching out cheap train fares, as well as different types of search tool. Bizarrely, they sometimes list different tickets, so for a belt-and-braces check on a big fare, try a few.

The main UK wide booking sites

	Booking fee	Credit card fee	Debit card fee	Free ticket postage	Advantages
RedSpottedHanky*	No	No	No	Yes	Tesco points stashers can grab RedSpottedHanky tickets for a half of the price. Read more.
Takethetrain	No	No	No	Yes	Takethetrain doesn't charge booking or postage fees, and clearly highlights the cheapest fares when you search.
East Coast	No	No	No	No	East Coast sells all train companies' tickets. Search for a trip & click 'lowest fares' at the bottom for that day's best prices.
TheTrainline*	£1 per transaction	£3.50	No	Yes	If you’re flexible, bash in your destination on its ‘Best Fare Finder’ and it’ll hunt the cheapest days and travel times.
Raileasy*	£1 on tickets over £10, £2 under £10	2.5%	50p	No	Sometimes highlights hard-to-spot deals, eg, when first-class is cheaper than standard. Until 31 Dec 2012 it charges no card/booking fees via this specific link
National Rail	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	It doesn't sell tickets, but lists fares and has great depth of search. It links to train operators, most of which are fees-free.

Double Tesco vouchers' value on rail fares

Spend Tesco Clubcard vouchers on goods in its Tesco Clubcard Rewards brochure and their value’s up to trebled or quadrupled, so a £10 voucher becomes £30 or £40.

One of the deals featured is train ticket shop RedSpottedHanky*. Swap a £10 voucher and it’s worth £20, which buys, say, a London-Birmingham advance return. It includes cheap advance fares, you can use your railcard, there are no booking fees and postage is free.

In our check, prices were similar to elsewhere, so this is a decent saving. To book, go to Tesco Rewards. The minimum order is £10 and vouchers are valid for six months.

Though before doubling on RedSpottedHanky, check Tesco's Rewards brochure, as it may allow you to quadruple vouchers' value. See our top 10 Tesco Rewards list.

More quick tricks and tips

As well as the tricks above, the following can also keep your spending off the buffers.

• Cut National Rail Enquiries call costs

  If you need to dial National Rail Enquiries, the official number is 0845 748 49 50. To call for less, dial 0121 634 2040, press '1' twice and you get to the same place. See SayNoTo0870 for a full guide.

• Travel overnight to save on accommodation

  Sleeper trains may sound like something from days gone by, yet travel overnight and you save on accommodation. If you're planning a trip to London from Scotland, check FirstScotRail's Bargain Berths section, where Caledonian Sleeper single fares start at £19.

• Get free first class in the dining car

  Some longer journeys still have first class dining cars as well as the standard buffet. These are often open to all diners, whatever class their ticket is. So go in and order a meal. While it's more expensive, you effectively travel in first class luxury at second class price - and get some grub.

  They do have the right to kick you back to where you belong, ie, second class, once you've finished eating, but it rarely happens.

• Reclaim the cost after train delays

  The rules state that if a train is late you can reclaim a full or partial refund. How late it needs to be to qualify depends on the journey, but as a rough rule of thumb, if you're over 30 minutes late then it's worth checking out. Ensure you keep your ticket and pick up a reclaim form from the station.

Hardcore tricks to beat the system

Now let's delve into the hidden timetable secrets. The sheer mass of journeys and rail companies, combined with the system's lack of logic, means there are lots of tricks to try. Yet there's no way to know whether it'll apply for your journey without checking.

Trick one. Singles can beat returns

Buying a return ticket should be cheaper than two singles. Yet logic and train fares go together like a kettle and a rabbit. Lots of top deals are only available on one-way fares. It's very common that cheaper fares are available for two single tickets but not the return, so always check.

Just to make it more confusing, occasionally if you're only doing a one way trip, buying a return can be cheaper.

The web makes finding them easy. If you're using East Coast, RedSpottedHanky* etc, you'll be shown both single and return fares.

Save £266 on a Manchester to Lond rtn

As an example, a quick search for a seat on a Manchester to London train, coming back the next day, brings up a standard anytime return ticket costing a whopping £296. A quick check instantly found that for the same journey, an outbound advance (single) ticket was £18, returning also on an advance at £12, a total of £30.

Trick Two. Split your tickets, not your journey

This is the big trick everyone should know. Instead of buying tickets for the whole journey, buying tickets for its constituent parts separately can bizarrely slash the price – even though you're travelling on exactly the same train.

It's perfectly allowed within the National Rail Conditions of Carriage. The only rule is that the train must call at the stations you buy tickets for.

Save £224 on a London - Penzance rtn

To show how this works, we unearthed this cracking example. For a London to Penzance return, the cheapest ticket was an anytime return at £264. Yet the train stopped in Plymouth, so instead we found four singles:

The total cost for those tickets was just £40, a saving of £224 and just to clear it up …

It's the same train at the same time, the difference is you've four tickets covering the journey rather than one.

Read a full step-by-step guide to finding split tickets

Watch out if you need to change trains

In the rare event that you book specific tickets, your split ticket stop coincides with the place you change trains, and your first train runs late, your second ticket might not be valid for the next leg of the journey.

Eg, if you travel from Aford to Cshire via Btown and split your tickets at Btown, plus need to change trains there, if the Ashire to Btown train is late, your ticket may not be valid for the later Btown to Cshire train.

Finally, off-peak and super off-peak tickets require you to travel at specific times of day. If you split your tickets at a station where you change, and the delay takes you outside the off-peak time, you'll have to pay again.

Trick three. Only pay peak for the bit that is

Train peak times are usually before 10am and between 5pm and 7pm. Yet if a long train journey's during peak time, even if a portion of it's outside peak time and you return outside peak time, you still pay peak ticket price for the whole return journey.

By following Trick Two above and split ticketing based on time as well as distance, you can ensure you're only paying peak prices for the portion of the journey that is peak.

How much can you save … £65 on a Taunton to London peak train return.

As an example, on testing a Taunton to London return journey leaving just after 8am, the standard return fare was £199. Yet splitting the ticket at Reading so the final portion is off-peak, and buying an off-peak ticket for the way back, you can get the same journey for £90.

Trick four. Grab £1 Megatrain fares

A bit like a pound shop for train tickets, Megatrain flogs hundreds of singles from £1 for routes across England & Scotland (plus 50p booking fee). Fares from a quid include London - Liverpool, Carlisle - Birmingham, Southampton - London, Bath - London and Glasgow - Preston.

And don't worry, it's not a cheap 'n' cheerful train. The site's run by Stagecoach, which owns South West Trains, East Midlands Trains and part-owns Virgin Trains. You're on the same service as everyone else, eg, for London to Brum it's Virgin.

What routes are included?

Megatrain covers over 100 journeys in England and Scotland. There's no map or destinations list on Megatrain's site; we suspect because its booking system's merged with Megabus £1 coach tickets, and the £1 train tickets draw people in to check prices.

Yet it's kindly allowed us to update an old map with all the latest routes and reproduce it here (see right, or see all Megatrain routes below)

Even if your full journey's not covered, you can still save when Megatrain covers part of the trip – see Megatrain Splitting below.

When can you get them?

While normal cheap advance tickets are released 10-12 weeks in advance, Megatrain only releases tickets 45 days before – handy for those booking later.

These are 'spare capacity' tickets, so there are more for less-popular times. Once the £1 tickets have gone, there are still uber-cheap fares, eg, £3, £5, £7. Popular routes sell like hot cakes, so diarise the date you want.

Just search on Megatrain and be sure to tick travelling by 'train' or you'll get bus fares as well. Booking fee is 50p (per transaction).

Another crafty trick is to combine Megatrain fares with split ticketing. If Megatrain covers part of your journey, grab a mega-ticket for one leg of your journey and a cheap advance for the rest.

Eg, if you were going from London to Truro in Cornwall, get a £1 mega-tickets from London-Exeter and a £10 advance for Exeter - Truro (as always, do check the train calls at the stations you buy tickets for).

Warning! Travelling short: cheap but banned

Cheap advance fares are often scarce on more popular routes, especially commuter ones. This means it's sometimes possible to buy a ticket for a longer journey that incorporates your route at a cheaper price and make some serious savings.

A popular one that was shut down, for example, was Chester to London. While peaktime cheap fares weren't usually available, for some journeys starting in Wales, going via Chester, they were, meaning absurdly it was actually substantially cheaper to travel further.

Many people do this, on lots of different routes and it's known as travelling 'short', but sadly it's a no-go as it's against advance tickets' terms and conditions, and you can get fined if you do. There are a few cheap off-peak fares on which it is allowed; it will be in the ticket’s terms and conditions.