In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message , at
10:06:12 on Sat, 16 Feb 2013, remarked:
However, you will have a fixed departure time for the return trip so a
ticket tied to a specific train would be much more practical and
wouldn't cost more than £10, maybe only £5.

Maybe. I'm finding that it's more and more difficult to buy Advance
tickets [in general, not for Southern] for some times of day, for the
cheapest prices, and if not months in advance.

You didn't look it up on the Southern Web site, did you? If you had done
so you wouldn't have written that irrelevant rubbish. There are an awful
lot of Southern trains from Gatwick to Victoria to choose between.

Which Southern Web site are you looking at?

As I said, www.southernrailway.com.

I just tried Monday 25th Feb 9am, and there are no trains with
promotional tickets before the 08:56 stopper (£12.80) and then none
of the £5-£10 Advance all day.

Same 25th March (no availability).

22nd April: £7.50 on the 09:53 is the first of the day, a few at £10
later, and not until 11:38 is there one at £5.

I tried 18th February after 10:00.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

Roland Perry wrote:

And I've just booked a real trip (not a hypothetical one) in late April
to the East Midlands, and the fare back was £16 (from a theoretical range
of £5-£29). Although I don't know why anyone would buy two £29 tickets as
the return walk-up fare is only £55.

Probably wouldn't. But if they were getting back by another means, OTOH,
or out in the peak, back offpeak...

Neil
--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK. Put first name before the at to reply.

In message , at 20:41:47
on Sat, 16 Feb 2013, remarked:
Which Southern Web site are you looking at?

As I said, www.southernrailway.com.

22nd April: £7.50 on the 09:53 is the first of the day, a few at £10
later, and not until 11:38 is there one at £5.

I tried 18th February after 10:00.

The first train (showing right now) with a promotional ticket is the
11:38 at £10. Which proves my point entirely.

"I'm finding that it's more and more difficult to buy Advance
tickets [in general, not for Southern] for some times of day,
for the cheapest prices, and if not months in advance."

In other words, nothing at £5, and nothing at all before late morning
(which is not much use if your plane arrives at 8am).

Unless you book months in advance (eg late April) when at least there's
some availability at £5, but the 11.38 threshold appearing again leads
me to think they may have a tiny quota of £5 fares earlier than that in
the morning even when first released.

Looking at (say) 13th May it says:

15 trains unavailable
09:53 £5
6 trains unavailable
10:38 £5
10:50 unavailable
10:53 £5

and so on.

By a week further from the booking horizon (6th May) several £10 fares
are creeping in.
--
Roland Perry

In message
.
net, at 09:54:42 on Sun, 17 Feb 2013, Neil Williams
remarked:
And I've just booked a real trip (not a hypothetical one) in late April
to the East Midlands, and the fare back was £16 (from a theoretical range
of £5-£29). Although I don't know why anyone would buy two £29 tickets as
the return walk-up fare is only £55.

Probably wouldn't. But if they were getting back by another means, OTOH,
or out in the peak, back offpeak...

You have to be a bit careful with concepts like peak and off-peak on
these regional trips.

On the journey in question, for example, there's no off-peak single,
just an "anytime", and the off-peak return is available from 9am.

In practice you'd split the ticket at Nottingham, where the CDR is £28 +
£9, so by buying in advance saved a "massive" £5 on a £37 walk-up fare
(if the outbound had also been £16 - in fact it was barely cheaper at
£13).
--
Roland Perry

wrote in message
...
In article , (Roland
Perry)
wrote:

In message , at
04:13:49 on Sat, 16 Feb 2013, remarked:

Get the £12.80 Southern-only ticket to Victoria.

And walk from there? If there's any onward travel involved a
Travelcard will be cheaper (off-peak).

Some parts of Chelsea are within walking distance of Victoria or more
accessible by bus.

However, you will have a fixed departure time for the return trip so a
ticket tied to a specific train would be much more practical and
wouldn't
cost more than £10, maybe only £5.

Maybe. I'm finding that it's more and more difficult to buy Advance
tickets [in general, not for Southern] for some times of day, for the
cheapest prices, and if not months in advance.

You didn't look it up on the Southern Web site, did you?

This is Roland's hobby-horse gripe.

He just inserted into this thread for effect

tim

In message , at 11:50:07 on Sun, 17
Feb 2013, tim..... remarked:

Maybe. I'm finding that it's more and more difficult to buy Advance
tickets [in general, not for Southern] for some times of day, for the
cheapest prices, and if not months in advance.

You didn't look it up on the Southern Web site, did you?

This is Roland's hobby-horse gripe.

He just inserted into this thread for effect

I'm trying to set the OP's expectations when it comes to finding one of
these elusive fares from Gatwick. Too many people (and Colin has
swallowed it hook line and sinker) seem to believe these tickets should
be widely available on most routes, when in practice they aren't.

It's almost a "bait and switch" operation by the ToCs, who insist
whenever fare increases are mentioned that "all you have to do is buy in
Advance", when time and time again that proves futile in practice. And
it's not just because quotas have been sold, increasingly there are
blackout periods where the quota is zero.
--
Roland Perry

In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message , at 20:41:47
on Sat, 16 Feb 2013, remarked:
Which Southern Web site are you looking at?

As I said, www.southernrailway.com.

22nd April: £7.50 on the 09:53 is the first of the day, a few at £10
later, and not until 11:38 is there one at £5.

I tried 18th February after 10:00.

The first train (showing right now) with a promotional ticket is the
11:38 at £10. Which proves my point entirely.

"I'm finding that it's more and more difficult to buy Advance
tickets [in general, not for Southern] for some times of day,
for the cheapest prices, and if not months in advance."

In other words, nothing at £5, and nothing at all before late morning
(which is not much use if your plane arrives at 8am).

Unless you book months in advance (eg late April) when at least there's
some availability at £5, but the 11.38 threshold appearing again leads
me to think they may have a tiny quota of £5 fares earlier than that in
the morning even when first released.

Looking at (say) 13th May it says:

15 trains unavailable
09:53 £5
6 trains unavailable
10:38 £5
10:50 unavailable
10:53 £5

and so on.

By a week further from the booking horizon (6th May) several £10 fares
are creeping in.

Oh do stop trolling, Roland!

It's too late now for an advance tomorrow but looking just now at Tuesday
after 09:45 I see £7.50 at 11:53 and £5 at 12:53.

We don't know what time the OP is travelling so we can't say more now.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In message , at 06:46:31
on Sun, 17 Feb 2013, remarked:
Looking at (say) 13th May it says:

15 trains unavailable
09:53 £5
6 trains unavailable
10:38 £5
10:50 unavailable
10:53 £5

and so on.

By a week further from the booking horizon (6th May) several £10 fares
are creeping in.

Oh do stop trolling, Roland!

Since when is quoting fares off their site, trolling?

It's too late now for an advance tomorrow

No it isn't, they should be available until 6pm.

but looking just now at Tuesday after 09:45 I see £7.50 at 11:53 and £5
at 12:53.

That's great for anyone not on any kind of schedule at all, or extremely
lucky to be wanting to travel at 12:53

--
Roland Perry

In uk.transport.london message , Sat,
16 Feb 2013 12:05:34, tim..... posted:

Note that this is a multi-lingual site, so you might be able to use
this in
your native language if you prefer (just change the "en" at the end).

and just what do you change it to to get it to talk to you in squiggle
squiggle language

Presumably the two-letter code for the squiggle squiggle language, which
a squiggle squiggle reader should know. The site goes blank for unknown
codes, which is bad implementation.

Apparently TfL does not support the American language, no doubt
expecting them to learn proper English.

--
(c) John Stockton, nr London, UK. Mail via homepage. Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Web http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - FAQqish topics, acronyms and links;
Astro stuff via astron-1.htm, gravity0.htm ; quotings.htm, pascal.htm, etc.
No Encoding. Quotes before replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Don't Mail News.

In message id of Sun,
17 Feb 2013 15:23:50 in uk.transport.london, Dr J R Stockton reply1300@
merlyn.demon.co.uk.invalid writes
In uk.transport.london message , Sat,
16 Feb 2013 12:05:34, tim..... posted:

Note that this is a multi-lingual site, so you might be able to use
this in
your native language if you prefer (just change the "en" at the end).

and just what do you change it to to get it to talk to you in squiggle
squiggle language

Presumably the two-letter code for the squiggle squiggle language, which
a squiggle squiggle reader should know. The site goes blank for unknown
codes, which is bad implementation.

Apparently TfL does not support the American language, no doubt
expecting them to learn proper English.


I don't believe that this site is designed to facilitate calling it as a
URL in languages other than German - the default language.

It requires effort to learn how to drive that interface.

It seems to require source access to find those codes.
In Internet Explorer, that is easy - View/Source. In Firefox, the option
is more obscure and I can't be bothered finding it. I don't use other
browsers.
The source which does the selection is
label class="structural-label" for="languages"Change
language/labelselect name="language" id="languages"option
value="en" selected="selected"English/optionoption value="de"Deutsc
h/optionoption value="fr"Français/optionoption value="it"Italian
o/optionoption value="es"Español/optionoption value="bn"?????/o
ptionoption value="hi"??????/optionoption value="gr"????????/opt
ionoption value="tr"Türkçe/optionoption value="vi"Ti?ng
Vi?t/optionoption value="gu"???????/optionoption value="pa"?????
?/optionoption value="ja"???/optionoption value="ru"???????
????/optionoption value="pl"jezyk polski/optionoption value="zh-
cmn"????/optionoption value="zh-yue"????/optionoption value="ur"
????/optionoption value="ar"????

The language selectors are en, de, fr, etc.
e.g. to call it in Türkçe(I assume that is Turkish), the URL is
http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/user/XSLT_TRIP_REQUEST2?language=tr

Just for fun, I quote a more complicated working URL:
http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/use...language=en&se
ssionID=0&itdDate=20130211&type_origin=stop&name_o rigin=WHITECHAPEL&type
_destination=stop&name_destination=TOWER%20HILL&it dTripDateTimeDepArr=ar
r&itdTime=927
--
Walter Briscoe