Newcastle central to London

[AM1]

Hi

I'm looking to see if there are any split ticket opportunities to make travel to London any cheaper. Kings cross or euston is fine. We're travelling on Saturday 10th may aiming to leave Newcastle around 7-8am and looking to return 11th may leaving around 2-4pm. Any advice would be much appreciated!

 

[Urban Gateline]

How many people are travelling? Also do any of you have any Railcards?

 

[AM1]

Sorry I should have said, 2 people no railcards or railcard entitlement, edited to change dates above

 

[Urban Gateline]

I checked the prices splitting at York using Advance tickets and it turns out to be more expensive than with just 1 ticket!

Direct cheapest is: 07:22 train out of Newcastle to London on East Coast on 10th May, then on 11th May taking the 17:00 East Coast train from London to Newcastle. Total is £111.80 for both of you in standard class. I'm sure someone else on here can find a better combination than that though?!

 

[AM1]

Thanks very much for your reply, I thought splitting made things cheaper??!!

 

[Urban Gateline]

Thanks very much for your reply, I thought splitting made things cheaper??!!

Not always, East Coast have some very reasonable through fares. It is on Anytime/Off-peak tickets where you tend to find splitting makes the Journey cheaper especially long distance, not the case on Advance tickets mostly though!

 

[bb21]

There is very little opportunity for split fares to work on the ECML.

Splitting doesn't in itself make fares cheaper, in fact it is more expensive. The reason sometimes it is cheaper is because it either involves different fare types, different pricing TOCs, different routeing permissions, or a combination of any of these (and more).

 

[yorkie]

Splitting won't be cheaper, except by splitting at Newark/Grantham at times when there is heavy demand on the southern part of the route.

 

[DaveNewcastle]

As a regul;ar traveller between Newcastle and London, I agree with bb21 and yorkie that 'splitting' the ticket is not, normally, going to result in a lower cost. And I agree that the most likely places to provide a saving if there is one, would be Grantham, Newark or Peterborough.

However, if you are willing to be bound by the restrictive conditions of Advance tickets, then there will be some slim prospects of saving a few pounds from time to time. Due to the unpredictable sequence in which the variously priced tiers of Advance tickets might become sold-out (leading to higher priced tiers being offered over some parts of the journey and not over others, you will occasionally find that an Advance to, say, Grantham, Newark or Peterbporough, plus another Advance from there to Kings Cross might be cheaper than the remaining more expensive tickets for the whole journey.

It's also worth checking the availability of low priced Advance 'first class' tickets for the legs of the journey you are looking at.

But I must tell you, that I very rarely put in the time and effort to find a saving of a few pounds by splitting between Newcastle and London. I usually find it to be unproductive, and is a very dull and pointless waste of time!

 

[John @ home]

We're travelling on Saturday 10th may aiming to leave Newcastle around 7-8am and looking to return 11th may leaving around 2-4pm.

2 people no railcards or railcard entitlement

Read the Two Together Railcard to return? thread. It may well be worth obtaining one of these Railcards when they're launched in early March.

 

[Olympian]

I checked the prices splitting at York using Advance tickets and it turns out to be more expensive than with just 1 ticket!

Direct cheapest is: 07:22 train out of Newcastle to London on East Coast on 10th May, then on 11th May taking the 17:00 East Coast train from London to Newcastle. Total is £111.80 for both of you in standard class. I'm sure someone else on here can find a better combination than that though?!

The through advance tickets are currently £55.90 in each direction on the above trains, but including a web discount from booking through the East Coast website.

For the 0722 outward journey, it IS actually currently slightly cheaper using split advance tickets at either York or Doncaster, with a bigger saving at Doncaster:

Newcastle - York: £13
York - Kings Cross: £42.30
TOTAL: £55.30

Newcastle - Doncaster: £16.90
Doncaster - Kings Cross: £36.30
TOTAL: £53.20


If you're happy to leave slightly earlier then you can save a few more pounds with a Newark split on the 0630 train from Newcastle (which is also currently £55.90 on through tickets):

Newcastle - Newark North Gate: £21.00
Newark North Gate - Kings Cross: £28.40
TOTAL: £49.40