Worth remembering...

[ffutures]

I want to travel to Wolverhampton in a couple of weeks, travelling there on a Friday evening and back on the Sunday. I can catch any train after 4.30 or so.

With Virgin's Trainline.com the earliest ticket that didn't cost a hundred plus was 6.40 PM - came out costing 43 quid. It's a direct journey, no changes, but I really didn't want to wait around for two hours and arrive in Wolverhampton around nine. And the return journeys offered were nightmares, with two changes of train.

Fortunately I remembered that I'd travelled from Marylebone once and had a reasonably good journey. So I looked up Marylebone and found it was run by Chiltern railways, hit their site and specified that I wanted to go from Marylebone (which happens to be the closest mainline station to where I work). The ticket came out at £35.60, and I could get the 4.30 train. The only drawback is that I have to change stations, not just trains, in Birmingham, and it's about a 5 minute walk from one to the other. The journey back is even simpler, just one change of trains at a single station. So I'm paying nearly ten pounds less to arrive in Wolverhampton two hours earlier.

Problem solved - but it's a disgrace that there isn't a central booking site for all of Britain's railways that offers alternatives like this without having to hunt for them.

Comments

[danel4d.livejournal.com]

What two stations is it in Birmingham? I'm just curious because it's where I went to uni.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Moor St. and New St.

[danel4d.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's what I thought it'd be. I had to change there once when I was heading to Stratford. It's probably a little less than five minutes... and it's quite nice just to see the total contrast between the two stations. They're so very different.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Third party opportunity! You can setup a website to do this and become an Internet Millionaire!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Someone could, but I doubt it'd be me - I lack the programming skills needed to make it work.

[norwegianne.livejournal.com]

I thought http://www.qjump.co.uk/ did that? It certainly seems like it from their website? I used them, for booking from Newcastle to Nottingham (different train services), and Newcastle to London and have been fairly satisfied.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Don't know that one at all - thanks, I'll take a look,

later And the answer is that it can do the less direct Marylebone routes but doesn't come up with them unless you specifically ask for them. Looks like a nice site though, thanks for the suggestion.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

And they sold us the breaking up of the rail system as being something that was good for consumers, and would drive down prices with competition.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

FX hollow laughter.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

It does rather seem that the ethos of Screwing People Over has become endemic in British culture.

I wonder what will happen to it now that our economy has been screwed.