Ticket pricing Euston to Preston

[TonyR]

I am travelling regularly from Euston to Preston. The cost of an Advance Single with a Senior Railcard comes in at £50.15. If I go to Manchester Picadilly instead its £24.40 and I can get a Manchestero to Preston ticket for £6.75 coming to a grand total of £31.15, a saving of £19.00. If I try to book on Avanti with Euston to Preston via Manchester it comes in even more expensive than Preston direct. at £51.50 for the exact same two trains. This website’s ticketing offers an even better fare of £29.51 via Manchester without splitting.

So where is the extra £20.00/£22.00 Avanti charge coming from over the price of booking the two tickets individually?

 

[miklcct]

The complexity of quota availability means such pricing anomaly can occur.

 

[JonathanH]

So where is the extra £20.00/£22.00 Avanti charge coming from over the price of booking the two tickets individually?

It could easily be a matter of the quotas on the Northern service not lining up with the quotas on the Avanti service, resulting in a higher charge overall.

For direct Preston to London services, there is only one train an hour, compared to three from Manchester, so fewer seats overall, and therefore not the lower prices tickets available from Manchester.

Advance tickets are all about yield management. There does not need to be any consistency in how they are priced. It is demand led.

 

[Bletchleyite]

£29.51 sounds like it is a split. Train tickets are priced in 10p increments, which goes to 5p if Railcards are involved. The only way you could be getting a 1p on the end would be if the ticket was a split and the Forum site is applying the "share of savings" fee which could calculate to a 1p increment.

I suspect Northern are mucking up the Advance quotas for the through Advances by using different ones than Avanti. Therefore splitting is, as you've observed, the answer to this journey - which is one (usually to a bit further north) I do quite often and prefer to travel via Manchester if only for the civilised boarding at the terminus (no scrum at Piccadilly) and that Picc is a decent place to pick up some food and drink for the journey unlike Preston which has barely anything.

A further upside of splitting is that you can engineer in a break of journey if you wish.

As @JonathanH says, it's cheaper because there's much more capacity with 3tph, though if you're not in a rush you may also find cheaper direct Advances on the "via Birmingham" slow Avanti service.

 

[TonyR]

£29.51 sounds like it is a split. Train tickets are priced in 10p increments, which goes to 5p if Railcards are involved. The only way you could be getting a 1p on the end would be if the ticket was a split and the Forum site is applying the "share of savings" fee which could calculate to a 1p increment.

I suspect Northern are mucking up the Advance quotas for the through Advances by using different ones than Avanti. Therefore splitting is, as you've observed, the answer to this journey - which is one (usually to a bit further north) I do quite often and prefer to travel via Manchester if only for the civilised boarding at the terminus (no scrum at Piccadilly) and that Picc is a decent place to pick up some food and drink for the journey unlike Preston which has barely anything.

A further upside of splitting is that you can engineer in a break of journey if you wish.

As @JonathanH says, it's cheaper because there's much more capacity with 3tph, though if you're not in a rush you may also find cheaper direct Advances on the "via Birmingham" slow Avanti service.

Curious. Although I had unticked the split tickets box it was a Euston-Preston search on the ticket site here that rendered the route via Manchester for £29.51 so yes its coming up as a split via Manchester. If I search though on here on Euston to Preston changing at Manchester I get the £51.50 fare.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Curious. Although I had unticked the split tickets box it was a Euston-Preston search on the ticket site here that rendered the route via Manchester for £29.51 so yes its coming up as a split via Manchester. If I search though on here on Euston to Preston changing at Manchester I get the £51.50 fare.

I can't seem to replicate it offering splits with splits turned off - maybe it was a glitch.

 

[TonyR]

I can't seem to replicate it offering splits with splits turned off - maybe it was a glitch.

Maybe or finger trouble as the same here.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

The very cheapest quotas of London Euston through to Preston Standard Advance Singles (with railcard discount) seem to be £18.45 (route "AvantiWestCoast") and £19.80 (route "AWC&Connections") both with quota code V2X. In practice, are these prices ever available, other than for journeys undertaken at daft o'clock?

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Euston-Preston Advances will not necessarily be on the direct Trent Valley route, Avanti sell capacity via Birmingham too (also an hourly through service).

 

[gray1404]

You could also look at London North Western Railway Advances from Euston to Crewe and then an Avanti Advance from Crewe to Preston. Making sure you allow 10 minutes between connections at Crewe of course.

 

[TonyR]

You could also look at London North Western Railway Advances from Euston to Crewe and then an Avanti Advance from Crewe to Preston. Making sure you allow 10 minutes between connections at Crewe of course.

I’ve done that route in the past and its quite a good one. The LNW trains are quite empty compared to the Avanti ones on the London leg.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jan 2024 ==

Euston-Preston Advances will not necessarily be on the direct Trent Valley route, Avanti sell capacity via Birmingham too (also an hourly through service).

I tend to look for and take the 2hr Euston-Preston or Euston Manchester trains which do the direct route. I have taken the longer journey time ones before on a split at Coventry though. Last time it left Euston an hour late and I was looking forward to getting my money back when it diverted at Rugby popping back out as Stafford ten minutes early and having to wait