'Great British Rail Sale'

[Brainaddict]

Has anyone managed to find discounts with this scheme? https://greatbritishrailsale.nationalrail.co.uk

That site takes you to other sites, like Great British Rail Sale 2022 | Up To 50% Off Train Tickets | Trainline

But then you put in times and destinations and the usual prices come up. I don't know how you can actually find the discounted tickets. Is there some magic time of day you have to choose or something? Anyone had any luck?

 

[8ball]

Was it teuchter that had the skinny on where to get the best rail deals?

 

[teuchter]

I've not really tried looking.

I guess if I was planning a journey within the time period I'd just do a search as usual and hope some cheaper than normal tickets might appear.

My instinct is that this "sale" is not going to amount to anything very exciting in reality. Like the "sales" the individual operators do, which don't often provide a huge number of bargains and are basically a way of getting you o go to their website and feel like you're under time pressure to get a cheap ticket. i tend to ignore them, largely.

 

[porp]

Has anyone managed to find discounts with this scheme? https://greatbritishrailsale.nationalrail.co.uk

That site takes you to other sites, like Great British Rail Sale 2022 | Up To 50% Off Train Tickets | Trainline

But then you put in times and destinations and the usual prices come up. I don't know how you can actually find the discounted tickets. Is there some magic time of day you have to choose or something? Anyone had any luck?

I had exactly the same experience. The first site you mention, even if you find a discount, simply points you to various retailers where you have to search for the same thing again. And where those discounts can't be found. Poor show.

 

[Brainaddict]

What a waste of time. They advertise £2.75 trips to Brighton, which I was interested in, but it seems like you'd have to sit at the computer trying every possible day and time in order to find such a ticket. Idiocy.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Doesn't seem to apply to trains people might actually need to get to work or anything. No local services here in Devon are discounted.

 

[Brainaddict]

Doesn't seem to apply to trains people might actually need to get to work or anything. No local services here in Devon are discounted.

To be fair the publicity around it made clear it was for journeys at less popular times anyway, i.e. outside of commuter hours, I think in the week. That's fine for me because I have a flexible schedule, as do many retired people and students. But it's absurd that I can't find any of these discounted tickets at all.

 

[Elpenor]

I think it’s for the intercities only. Had a quick look and it seemed to offer genuinely cheap tickets based on what I know prices to be - BUT it is destined to fail if it doesn’t give you a direct pathway to then buy a ticket.

I would have been keen to plan a weekend trip somewhere down in Cornwall until I saw I had to then search on multiple TOC websites and other portals.

FYI you can sometimes get 10% cash back on some TOCs - and they don’t need to be the TOC who actually operate the train - I booked some tickets from London to Ashford using the LNER website and got 10% back via my Amex card. The train was operated by SouthEastern.

 

[teuchter]

Try using

Best Fare Finder | Cheap Train Tickets Fare Finder | Trainline

Looking for the best price train tickets for your journey? Our Best Fare Finder tool will help you find and book cheap train tickets across the UK.

www.thetrainline.com

And enter the journey you're interested in, and your ideal day of travel. You'll get something like this:



Click near the top right, where (in my screenshot) it says "other days from £2.70".

It will reveal a bar of options like this:



In that case, there's a super-cheap fare on the 28th. Click that day and it'll show you which service(s) it's being offered on.

If you want to buy it, don't necessarily buy it on Trainline which adds booking fees - go and find it on one of the train operators' websites.

Some of the individual operators have a version of this "cheap far finder" on their websites (I think LNER, Scotrail and EMR do, from memory, for example) but often they'll only show options for their own trains, or only for certain routes.

 

[Brainaddict]

Ah, thanks teuchter, though I see that helpfully that button only appears when you book a one way journey. If you try to book a day return it isn't there.