Plymouth to Wakefield

[dhedley]

I wanted to buy 2 Senior railcard tickets for the 12:24 Plymouth to Wakefield on 16 April. The headline cost of these was £95.

With a bit of work (!), I got this down to £51.40.

I now have the following tickets:
£7.30 Plymouth to Tiverton
£9.20 Tiverton to Bristol Parkway
£5.90 Bristol Parkway to Cheltenham Spa
£8.60 Cheltenham Spa to Birmingham NS
£9.20 Birmingham NS to Derby
£4.60 Derby to Chesterfield
£6.60 Chesterfield to Wakefield.

We have to move to seats directly opposite at Birmingham, but we can cope with that.

I trust the guard will be impressed! Or does he often see such things? What is the current record for splitting journeys?

 

[Goatboy]

What tickets are they? I can't find a £7.30 fare from PLY to TIV.

 

[soil]

Must be a combination of Advance fares and walk-up singles.

 

[dhedley]

All ticket prices mentioned are Advance Returns - with Senior Railcard discount.

 

[Goatboy]

All ticket prices mentioned are Advance Returns - with Senior Railcard discount.

You can't buy Advance Returns, only singles. So presumably then its two Singles at £3.65 each, which is why I couldn't find it

 

[soil]

There are no Advance returns.

 

[cambsy]

I have done similar from South West but with Cheap Day Returns, had up to 8 return tickets, saving up to £50-60, guards have been surprised, but saves so much money, I split London to Glasgow at Preston and save £7 used to be more.

 

[calc7]

I have got splitting for my long-distance XC journeys to a level of mastery. Their frequent stops mean that splitting into "local" journeys can more than halve the price you pay. I use a WebTIS-based engine like East Coast - it even highlights the same train automatically on the next segment so you don't choose the wrong one.

I recently did Wakefield - Plymouth for £29 (w/railcard), booked a few days in Advance, splitting at Derby, Birmingham NS, Cheltenham Spa, Bristol TM, Taunton and Totnes. Half of that was in First Class as those segments were cheaper or a few pence more than Standard.

 

[dhedley]

Sorry - I meant Advance Singles. An age problem (I do have my senior railcard!)

 

[bb21]

I have done this several times, all on XC. The guards didn't batter an eyelid.

I guess it helps if your tickets are all in order so the guard can just follow them sequentially and stamp them one by one.