Trains

I'm 34 and looking at travelling by train once a month to a town game or/and back to Grimsby from the southwest. I'm trying to work out which rail card would be best. Any I try that I'm technically eligible for I save next to nothing. Yet when I look at ones such as the 26-30 I get hefty savings....

Quoted from lukeo

I'm 34 and looking at travelling by train once a month to a town game or/and back to Grimsby from the southwest. I'm trying to work out which rail card would be best. Any I try that I'm technically eligible for I save next to nothing. Yet when I look at ones such as the 26-30 I get hefty savings....

Try split ticketing, it might help.

Quoted from lukeo

I'm 34 and looking at travelling by train once a month to a town game or/and back to Grimsby from the southwest. I'm trying to work out which rail card would be best. Any I try that I'm technically eligible for I save next to nothing. Yet when I look at ones such as the 26-30 I get hefty savings....

It's not the cost you need to worry about, it's if the trains are running.

TransPennine up here are shocking, getting as bad as Stagecoach.

Quoted from DB

Try split ticketing, it might help.

This does help a bit.

*edit* I've managed to find a way of getting myself and son from taunton to Grimsby and back for £107 (I'd need a family rail cars though) probably about the same price as if I drove so very tempting

Unfortunately, it's not just the cost you have to consider, but also the reliability. My wife took a train to Sheffield yesterday to visit her sister. The train she was booked on (4.25-ish) was cancelled, as were all the others until later at night so I ended up having to leave work to look after the kids so she could catch the train an hour earlier - the only one running for about 6 or 7 hours! She's due back on Sunday and I fully expect I may have to drive to pick her up. Wouldn't surprise me if most of the train services were cancelled.

We're turning into a flipping third world country under the idiots running the show (into the ground). It would be a massive gamble to travel all the way from the south west on the train as things stand!

I've basically all but given up trying to go to away games on the train now, you just can't rely at all on them (nor can you get cheap advance tickets reliably like you could pre-pandemic). It's stupid because it's my preferred method of long travel but instead i'm forced into driving everywhere instead which isn't exactly great for the environment is it!

Dang. I appreciate the responses guys. I was hoping to come up on the 27th Dec and go back on the 31st. Do you not get compensation, refund or offered other transport if its cancelled?

Quoted from lukeo

Do you not get compensation, refund or offered other transport if its cancelled?

Supposedly but they make it a proper struggle to sort out with some stations having nobody working in them due to cuts or maze like customer services. I went a gig in Manchester from Warrington this week and there were no trains back from 9pm onwards as they were all cancelled due to 'short notice cancellations'. There was only a rail replacement bus just before midnight which would've got us home at 1.30am. Paid £35 for an uber instead which got us home in 20 minutes.

The country is tanking, is going to excrement and surrounded by actual excrement pumped into the sea. 🇬🇧

Unless you're a full-time student you aren't eligible for a rail card to use on your own. If you're traveling with a child, get a family one or if it's two adults, a Two Together card. Otherwise, try split ticketing.

When all else fails massage your thumb and have good pair of walking boots.