Wednesday, January 15, 2025
I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to buy tickets in the Great British Rail Sale. This is one of those rare bonanzas when rail companies significantly reduce the price of some of their advance tickets, usually in the winter months when fewer people are travelling. Often only one operator offers bargains, for example just GWR or only LNER, but occasionally the government steps in and encourages most of them to join in.
This is a nationwide sale to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the railways, specifically the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825, and 20 different rail companies are taking part.
Train operating companies across England, Wales and Scotland are working together to offer up to 50% off selected Advance tickets on over 2 million journeys. The discounted fares will be available from participating train operating companies and ticket retailers.
Rail Sale tickets will go on sale from Tuesday 14 January to Monday 20 January 2025. Tickets can be purchased for travel between Friday 17 January and Monday 31 March 2025. Tickets must be purchased at least 3-7 days prior to travel, this varies by operator.
At greatbritishrailsale.nationalrail.co.uk you can discover the best savings available, but to identify which trains are included at which times on which days you have to search for tickets as usual on operator websites, ticketing portals and apps. Some fares are amazing (London → Sheffield £6.30), other merely quite good (London → Blackpool £29) and others still quite pricy (London → Penzance £41). Some of the best-looking bargains are however very hard to find or may have sold out, plus that's only a single ticket so it'll cost double to come back again. But it pays to keep hunting.
I was particularly interested to find cheap tickets to big towns I've never been to so spent ages yesterday trying to concoct day trips at bargain prices. They're all further north than Nottingham so not necessarily on the cheap list, also sometimes only the slower operators are offering good value tickets, also not necessarily at convenient times. But I eventually managed to plan trips to three of them for a total cost of just £45, which I'm particularly pleased about, and you can expect to read about those in February and March. Let's hope the weather's better by then.
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