Rommie2k6

As above, are there any good travel hacks (to get discount) when using National Rail and National Express? From basic stuff like AAA rates, coupons, to other tricks?

My train/bus costs are ramping up for my trip to UK, and would like to keep it down if possible. Thanks!

NWIFlyer

National Rail is merely an umbrella website for the various individual rail companies, hosted by the Rail Delivery Group, which gives you pricing on all allowable routes. It will not sell you tickets.

There are no free discount codes. If you qualify for a railcard through age, or travelling as a couple, or with children, then you very quickly recover the cost if you make more than a handful of long distance journeys (and you don’t have to be a UK resident to buy one. Sometimes you’ll see an offer to reduce the typically Ł30 cost by a few pounds as well). There are a few other more specific cards that might suit but you’d need to give us a flavour of the trips you’re planning to know if these would be worthwhile.

You can also dramatically reduce cost by buying advance tickets for a specific train, and sometimes individual train companies might offer a deal on a given route.

National Express offer a handful of Coachcards, but qualification criteria is tighter. There are a number of different private coach companies, which includes NE, and you’d be better shopping around those to find the best fare.

UKtravelbear

stut

For the railways, there's loads of hacks.

The most obvious is that Advance Purchase tickets, which restrict which train you can get, are much cheaper than flexible tickets, and are generally released 12 weeks before travel.

Now, as for the rest...

You may find on certain routes, there is competition. London-Birmingham, for example, is covered by Virgin Trains, who are the fastest, but also by LNWR and Chiltern. The latter is a very civilised way to travel, and often far, far cheaper. On shorter routes, like Glasgow-Edinburgh or York-Newcastle, you will find other competitors who will undercut each other on fares. Your best bet is to go to the railway company's own website, and see what's on offer.

There are also Railcards. If you're under 30, over 60, travelling as a pair, travelling with a child, or travelling primarily in SE England, then you can pay ca Ł30, and get 1/3 discount. You can make that back very quickly. You can buy these fares without owning the railcard, but you must have it in your possession when you travel. If you're travelling as a group of 3 or more, there are discounts too.

There are Rover and Ranger tickets. If you're exploring an area, these can work out pretty good value. Coming from abroad, you also have the option of a BritRail pass.

National Rail Enquiries - Rovers & Rangers

Now, into the murky world of split ticketing. This is a tricky one. Basically, different railway companies set fares on different station pairs. Some fares are government-regulated, some aren't. What that means is that, for example, a commuter railway may set relatively cheap fares on short routes, whereas an inter-city railway may want to promote its Advance Purchase tickets, and have expensive walk-up fares their longer routes. The result is that tickets from A->B and B->C may be cheaper than A->C. An example:

Websites like Trainsplit can help figure this out for you. These tickets are perfectly legal, but the train must stop at the station(s) where you are splitting the tickets (unless you hold a season ticket, but that's a whole other story). You may also find, if you're travelling at peak times in one direction only, that it's cheaper to buy a peak single and an off-peak single than it is to buy a return.

Then there's Megatrain. Megabus (another alternative for cheap coach travel) also offers discounted train tickets on London to Sheffield and Nottingham.

dj_jay_smith

I assume that you are an overseas visitor, so then you could look into a visitors rail pass known as Britrail. You can then purchase a travel pass which is valid for almost the whole network (some exclusions do apply) for a defined number of days for a fixed price.

More details here:
BritRail

Rommie2k6

Thanks. For the 'advance' rail tickets, if you miss it (like your flight was late), I assume there is no recourse?

What if you miss a connection on the rail? Some of the connections are tight (few min), and if I am not familiar with the train station layout it can have issues.

stut

It depends. If you're travelling on Trans-Pennine from Manchester Airport, for example, the tickets have a 3-hour buffer in case of flight delay. Otherwise, you're generally SOL, although some railways are better at giving their staff discretion (e.g. Virgin Trains) than others.

Some (e.g. Virgin Trains again) also have an option to go flexible one way and 'advance' the other way, at a discounted rate.

There is a specified minimum interchange time at major stations (or between nearby stations on different lines), with a default time of 5 minutes at others. Easiest way to find this out is using BRTimes. If your connection falls under this time limit, it is not a protected connection. If a delay causes it to be under this time limit, then you have recourse if you miss it. If you miss it because of an unfamiliar station, you'd have to fall back on discretion. Obviously, this only applies when your onward connection is restricted.

(This also impact whether or not you can claim for Delay Repay. For example, I often connect at Peterborough on Sundays. Peterborough has an 8-minute connection time, and my onward connection from there is hourly and flexible. There is often an 11-minute connection between trains. If the inbound train is 4 minutes late, then you can technically claim back the entire journey, as you're an hour late, due to the connection time being too small to make it. Of course, you can't take the earlier train and claim legally, but if you were planning on stopping off in town anyway...)

FWIW, all station layouts are available on the nationalrail website, just not always easy to find. Here's an example of a rather confusing one:

National Rail Enquiries -