BR era special ticket offers

[satisnek]

It definitely happened in 1987 (February, I think) and 1988 (March, I think); I didn't have a railcard before that so I didn't notice whether there was anything in earlier years. I don't remember it in 1989 or later.

That would explain why I have photos of trains on remote Scottish routes with those dates!

 

[SargeNpton]

Late 70s there was one special Senior Railcard offer, for one day only, whereby railcard holders got completely free travel on that day (pretty sure it was a Saturday). No ticket required, you just showed your railcard at the ticket barrier.

 

[WesternLancer]

The February 1986 one was one of the most comically stupid ideas ever conceived by British Rail, and was the reason why the 1987 and 1988 ones were scaled back.

Basically it went like this - any ticket up to £15 = £5
Any ticket up to £30 = £10
Any ticket over £30 = £15

I am sure you can see the inherent problem with this ...

So, *any* ticket was £15. So if you had a friendly ticket office person, or went to a BR travel agent (who frankly, usually, didn't have a clue what they were doing), it was "Hello, kind sir/madam, can I have a return from Penzance to Wick, via Brighton, Norwich, Fishguard, Holyhead, Hull, Stranraer and Aberdeen please?"

Instant All-Line for £15!

Even if you didn't have a friendly person, you could buy straight returns anywhere, so the usual one was to buy a return between two stations that were a long way apart but frankly no ticket collectors outside that area had ever heard of (Causeland to Plockton, please! And a return from Alexandra Parade to Alexandra Palace while you're at it). And then there were the funny ones (Bat & Ball to Bowling, Whitchurch to Whitchurch via Whitchurch).

Not only that, but the return halves were valid for a month, so if were judicious buying your tickets, most of March was covered as well!

Since it was the winter, there obviously wasn't the "rare engine" bashing opportunities available, but many people availed themselves of the excellent opportunities, I myself spending most of the two months blasting up and down the ECML and sampling the steam heat 47 action in Scotland (I cleared four boilered locos for 1000 miles, one of which was an English one that the ScR had kidnapped).

The Southbound overnights from Scotland on a Saturday were, shall we say, "busy", one memorable occasion on 1E43 with 47596 from Aberdeen to Newcastle via Carlisle, and 47401 from Newcastle to KX (via every conceivable diversion route - Leamside, Lincoln, Cambridge) having pretty much every metre of floor space filled with sleeping people.

Unsurprisingly, there was a rethink.

Laws of unintended consequences maybe but is this so stupid?

If the trains had the capacity then it's £15 in the fare box that would otherwise not have been received, and it probably boosted railcard sales which people then go on to use for the rest of the year

And surely at the time (with only the grapevine to spread the idea, no social media) it would only have been fairly marginal amount of bashers - as a proposition of the whole number of railcard users - who would do that, I would have thought.

At the age I was then, and a student, £15 would still have been a fair bit of money to me - and £15 is not the total cost after all, since you need to eat etc when out an about. I would not have been able to afford to do lots of these types of trips over the offer validity.

Mind you, that it was adjusted in subsequent years does indeed suggest a 'refinement' of the offer was decided upon.

 

[neilmc]

On Royal Wedding day in 1981 (yes that one, with Princess Di) BR Eastern Region had an offer - you could travel anywhere on the region except London free of charge. I'm not sure if you even needed a ticket. I got from Leeds all the way to Norwich then Great Yarmouth and took pictures of Eastern Counties half-cab buses (there were very few actually running though!). But I think every rail enthusiast in North-East England had the same idea - the footbridge at Peterborough was a seething mass of anoraks, cameras and no doubt Thermos flasks and Ian Allan A-Zs.

 

[D1537]

Laws of unintended consequences maybe but is this so stupid?

If the trains had the capacity then it's £15 in the fare box that would otherwise not have been received, and it probably boosted railcard sales which people then go on to use for the rest of the year

And surely at the time (with only the grapevine to spread the idea, no social media) it would only have been fairly marginal amount of bashers - as a proposition of the whole number of railcard users - who would do that, I would have thought.

At the age I was then, and a student, £15 would still have been a fair bit of money to me - and £15 is not the total cost after all, since you need to eat etc when out an about. I would not have been able to afford to do lots of these types of trips over the offer validity.

Mind you, that it was adjusted in subsequent years does indeed suggest a 'refinement' of the offer was decided upon.

I think apart from the revenue loss (although one could argue in the case of a number of bashers it was one of the few times they had 100% valid tickets!) the bigger problem was the trains that got nonsensically wedged out, especially between England and Scotland at weekends. No seat reservations in those days, and I can well remember pulling into Crewe on 1S19 one Friday night and seeing a few dozen people on the platform looking at the seating coaches which not only had no seats left, but the vestibules were full as well.

 

[WesternLancer]

I think apart from the revenue loss (although one could argue in the case of a number of bashers it was one of the few times they had 100% valid tickets!) the bigger problem was the trains that got nonsensically wedged out, especially between England and Scotland at weekends. No seat reservations in those days, and I can well remember pulling into Crewe on 1S19 one Friday night and seeing a few dozen people on the platform looking at the seating coaches which not only had no seats left, but the vestibules were full as well.

Well, yes, good points.
But IIRC seat reservation could be had for £1...

 

[alistairlees]

Well, yes, good points.
But IIRC seat reservation could be had for £1...

Indeed, there were seat reservations on a fairly limited number of long-distance trains. In 1977 a reservation was 40p per seat. So, if you were a family of four going on a return journey that involved a reservable train to London, and another one from London, then you would have 16 seats to reserve - £6.40. That's £42.37 today (or £10 each, for the return journey) according to an inflation calculator I just used.

 

[D1537]

On Royal Wedding day in 1981 (yes that one, with Princess Di) BR Eastern Region had an offer - you could travel anywhere on the region except London free of charge. I'm not sure if you even needed a ticket. I got from Leeds all the way to Norwich then Great Yarmouth and took pictures of Eastern Counties half-cab buses (there were very few actually running though!). But I think every rail enthusiast in North-East England had the same idea - the footbridge at Peterborough was a seething mass of anoraks, cameras and no doubt Thermos flasks and Ian Allan A-Zs.

It was £1 if I remember! We did a pair of 25's (25081/150) from Leicester to Nottingham, 20186/188 to Skegness, 47301 to Lincoln, 40180 to Retford, and 55008 to York (totally wedged, if I remember there weren't many Deltics about that day), followed by 47273 to Derby and home.

 

[WesternLancer]

Indeed, there were seat reservations on a fairly limited number of long-distance trains. In 1977 a reservation was 40p per seat. So, if you were a family of four going on a return journey that involved a reservable train to London, and another one from London, then you would have 16 seats to reserve - £6.40. That's £42.37 today (or £10 each, for the return journey) according to an inflation calculator I just used.

I had it in my mind that by c1986 your £1 reservation fee was for the full trip, even if it involved a change - but I must be mistaken. And that by that date most IC services had the ability to reserve. Again I may not recall correctly.

 

[Harvester]

During the summer timetable of 1970 and 1971, BR ran a slow Newcastle to London and return service called “The Highwayman”. It ran via the Durham Coast route, then the ECML to Finsbury Park. The price was cheap at around £2 (one way), but the leisurely pace (about six hours), old rolling stock, and the inconvenience of terminating and starting at Finsbury Park led to it’s demise after only two summers.

 

[Falcon1200]

I visited my parents in London for a weekend and and bought a young Lady

What I hope is a missing letter ‘r’ is probably quite important here!

Maybe not, perhaps the money saved on the rail fares was put to good use !

Way back in 1972, BR offered some cheap fares from the likes of Oxford. Me and a friend took advantage to spend a day spotting at Birmingham New St (for 35p), then got more ambitious and went to Manchester to visit Reddish Depot (for 75p). We were 13 at the time.....

 

[peteb]

I'm certain the February Railcard offer was £5 day return to anywhere at weekends, so in 1986 and 1987 a friend and I did London to Norwich, Edinburgh, Penzance, Glasgow, Exeter (via Taunton return via Salisbury). I wish we'd realised you could use them as singles as we could have made several weekend breaks. We still got excessed to upgrade to weekend first from memory....

 

[Peakrider]

I think the "Persil tickets" must have been good for the commany's soap powder sales, since - as I remember - they were very popular and widely used for quite some time. I and friends of mine did a lot of extra travelling courtesy of Persil.

I remember the Persil offers well, late 70s I think, you filled the departure and destination stations in yourself if I remember correctly. 3 or 4 of us went from Chesterfield to Keith out via Inverness and back via Aberdeen. Happy days!

Yes I used this offer a lot having spent a lot of time badgering Mum to buy Persil over her usual Fine Fare own brand powder! We went all over the country.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 May 2022 ==

If this is the same thing that I remember, it was in January 1987, possibly for a few weeks (maybe the month) rather than a specific day although I'm not sure about that. It was marketed as being about teddy bears, but I think if you looked at the small print it was in effect a special offer (though not free) for Family Railcard holders and you didn't have to bring a bear -- presumably they didn't want to cause difficulties for families with teenagers who considered thmeselves too old to carry teddy bears around with them. (I was 16 by then anyway, but my brother qualified the family for a railcard; we did a trip to Hereford without him having to take a bear with him).


I don't know about the 1970s (or indeed the present day), but my recollection is that when I had a YP Railcard in the 1980s and 90s it was also available to full-time students of any age.

It was and still is! One of the reasons I didn’t start my degree until I was 25! As the YP railcard was for under 26s.
Weren’t Senior Railcards open to those 55+ with a Rail Europe version for discount Europe tickets?

 

[xotGD]

Several of us have posted details of cheap February/March outings over on the "Back in the Day" thread.

A couple of lads I knew bought returns from Birmingham to Wick, and on arrival went to the ticket office and bought returns to Penzance. So over a couple of weeks did Brum-Wick-Penzance-Wick-Brum with a break in the middle.

I remember a much earlier TV ad with someone singing "Awayday kids go for forty pence, but they've got to take a grown-up too."

 

[Gerald Fiennes]

Jumble: Perhaps this might jog your memory?!

 

[P Binnersley]

In the early 80s there was a Round-Robin ticket from Birmingham to Weymouth and back - via Bristol and Westbury one way, and Bournemouth and Reading the other.

They were also available from Birmingham for the Central Wales line. I think there were a couple of other routes, but my memory fails me.