A person on a forum I own said this, does anyone understand it?
"I only ask, as when I worked in UK, we had a person who worked in Doncaster but travelled from somewhere in Shropshire and he bought his tickets months in advance - he worked the same shift, knew when the school holidays would be, etc - so he got tickets at really cheap prices."
"I think about £10-£15 for a week return, as against £40+
Yes, he must have done that journey once a week (not every day as you are doing!), and he bought advance purchase tickets, probably VirginValue advance singles.
When we went up to Scotland, we got return tickets for £30 each instead of about £80+ each coz we bought them early."
Yes, probably VirginValue or GNER Advance.
Can someone tell me where the best place is to buy tickets online for my particular journey?
Your regular commute? you won't save money buying online. Some of the TOCs do sell season tickets online (
http://www.firsttranspennine.trainsfares.co.uk/LandingPage.asp?sitecode=FTP ), however I recommend purchasing it locally to ensure it is printed on
Gold Card stock. Do you make use of your Gold Card? Some people even go to the expense of purchasing a season ticket they rarely, or never, use in order to obtain one for the benefits.
You are rather unlikely to save money purchasing a combination of tickets if you:
* are travelling every day (a season ticket is going to be best value)
* are travelling relatively short distances (advance purchase won't help, and there is no option for buying SVRs to get round railcard minimum fare restrictions)
I know someone who does a regular commute York-Leeds several times a week (but not daily), who holds a Y-P. He can save money by purchasing a series of SVR returns (the FSR50 offer would have been useful here!) to somewhere like Bradford. However if he travelled every day, or did not hold a railcard, or made a journey that was too short for SVRs to be of any use, then he'd be best off with a season. There is also the option of buying to South Milford on the basis that it's valid via Leeds, but I doubt any routeing loopholes are going to help you on your journey.