Hail again!
Cheaper tickets on the Reading Festival Weekend - not much hope really. The trains are absolutely mobbed and from memory the XC services are rarely strengthened.
If you're prepared to go a bit out of the way. Try getting thinking laterally.
yep that was my thinking entirely
I only usually do Advance purchase if im complelety certain im going to be on the train with no issues e.g. City Break
One other route that
might work for ye on the cost front could be using the same Chiltern deal that I use to get to Derby on the cheap. With a Railcard, an off-peak return between Woking/Surbiton/Clapham and Birmingham (And presumably the reverse) is only £14.20, routed
+High Wycombe and it includes a cross-London transfer on LuL as well...That at least would give ye a good price for about half of thy journey!
Taking a quick peek at the NFM for Railcard fares, here's what I can come up with:
- £18.95 - SVR: Manchester > Birmingham Stns,
- £14.20 - OPR: Birmingham Stns > Clapham Jct, rte +High Wycombe,
- £14.65 - SVR: Clapham Junction > Reading Main, rte NOT London,
- £47.80 - Total of split fares.
Note: This route runs
MAN > STA >
BHM > LMS > HWY >
MYB >
WAT >
CLJ > SNS >
RDG. The tickets listed above can be used on most trains, but some - Including BHM > MYB - May have some time restrictions on them.
Some of the benefits of this route - Lower fares aside - Is that the majority of thy journey will be performed on lesser known lines, and there'll be a much greater likelyhood of ye getting a comfortable seat - Especially as almost all normal passengers use Virgin to go Birmingham/Manchester to London; leaving Chiltern, London Midland, and other "stopper" operators relatively uncrowded. Although I'd forsee a few people using Waterloo - Reading services for their journey, most people travelling from London will be trying to cram onto GWR HSTs and fGW Link TurboStars at Paddington, and most probabally won't even know of the SWT route.
A negative aspect to this suggestion - Of course - Is that the journey itself is a lot less direct than the normal one would be, uses slower trains, and consequently will take a lot longer than usual. If ye are willing to take a longer journey across "rare" lines and clock up more coverage in the process though, it's a good route - AND ye shouldn't have to put up with standing all the way into and out of London! 8)
Cheaper tickets on the Reading Festival Weekend - not much hope really. The trains are absolutely mobbed and from memory the XC services are rarely strengthened.
That's a bit foolish of XC isn't it? I can appreciate that they only have a limited quantity of rolling stock, but surely there's nothing to stop them running 2-3x 221s in formation to give people a half decent amount of space...
Or even better would be using HSTs on all workings calling at Reading. Not only would they get a lot more passenger space in (Especially if they declassified all bar one 1st class carriage on those services) but the parcel rooms inside the power cars would make excellent places for punters to dump their bags for the journey and avoid the hassle of trying to fit heavily packed rucksacks into the normal luggage racks! 8)
I know that AXC's board of directors probabally don't have much more than an ounce of common sense between them (If they want to disprove me on this, they should do as I suggest above!
) but festival services - Where each passenger is carrying more luggage than trains are designed to accommodate - Are probabally one of the few situations where it would be better to operate trains in a similar way to aircraft.
Farewell for now, and hope this helps!
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