On 16 Jan, 01:00, "tim....." wrote:
"Will" wrote:
Thanks for further replies. *Perhaps I should have pointed out that
there's four of them and that they're travelling at peak time (to arrive
at Queen's Gate at 9-9.30am for a visa application) so part-drive seemed
to them to be the cheaper option. Perhaps, though, I should look up
rail advance booking for them instead.
There are no Advanced discounts for ex-Southern region stations to London in
the morning peak.
Not true. SWT has long offered Apex fares to and from London (not sure
if they were ever offered between other SWT stations though) - in line
with the fares simplification these have now been renamed Advance
fares. For more info see:
http://www.southwesttrains.co.uk/SWT...ancedFares.htm
Also Megatrain started offering advance purchase tickets on SWT
between London and Southampton/ Portsmouth back in November '05 -
though these are only available from their website or premium rate
phone line, so they're not conventional Advance tickets which one can
buy from any rail ticket outlet (e.g. booking office or online booking
website).
Southern (the current train company) also started offering Advance
fares for a limited of journeys since at least May last year - see:
http://www.southernrailway.com/main.php?page_id=499
These routes do include Brighton to London.
I did try and check whether there were any such tickets available on
early trains into London but all TheTrainline websites are currently
down for "scheduled maintenance" and the NXEC site didn't find any
such fares even in the middle of the day. I've had trouble with NXEC
finding these fares beforehand but others have managed ok in this
regard [1]... that said I've just tried the raileasy website and it is
offline for "planned maintenance" too - as this is a completely
separate booking engine then I dare say it may be the railways'
central reservation system that is down too... but the plot thickens,
as the NXEC site can find Advance tickets available for both London to
Leeds and London to Manchester. Curious.
OK the raileasy site is back up, the maintenance was only until 0130
whilst TheTrainline remains down until 0700.
And raileasy does indeed find these cheap Southern fares, but the
earliest train they're available for on a weekday morning in February
is the 09:19 from Brighton, arrives in at Victoria at 10:11.
I suppose that you might be able to find one to somewhere beyond that is
cheaper than the London fare.
Apart from Brighton which has the above Advance fares (and which isn't
really any further from London than Polegate) there isn't really
anywhere else.
The other option is to forget the train altogether and look at taking
a coach - a National Express coach Day Return fare from Brighton is
£11.90, and there are cheaper 'funfares' available (from £3 one-way)
if you book far enough in advance. The 06:00 departure from Brighton
arrives in to Victoria coach station at 08:20, which would be the one
to get to be in Queen's Gate for 9- 9:30 am.
London bus fares cost £2 for a single (this is to encourage take up of
Oyster cards with which they cost £1), whilst a one-day Bus Pass costs
£3.80. In central London one needs to have a ticket before boarding a
bus so the correct and exact change is needed in order to get a ticket
from the ticket machine at the bus stop, which also sells one day Bus
Passes (as do Tube station ticket offices and ticket machines).
-----
[1] Two past uk.r threads on the topic of Southern's Advance fares and
their availability (or otherwise) online:
http://groups.google.com/group/uk.ra...9a38fa21287ac9
and
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk....ea8083063bb49c