About to buy a ticket London-Glasgow, with 08:30 being the appropriate service for me. I could also make it with the 09:30 one, but barely so.
However, the 08:30 train costs 143 pounds whereas the 09:30 one only costs 47.
Could anyone please explain the reason for this huge price difference over just one hour?
Thanks in advance
Both of these tickets are Advance tickets. Advance tickets are priced in "tiers", and it is simply that in this case a much cheaper tier of Advance is available on the later train. The train companies
claim Advances exist to fill seats on less busy services, but in reality they are (on the companies that manage them properly) a revenue management tool, just in the same way that flights cost different amounts depending on what time, and which day of the week, they depart.
Therefore the cost of the fare is designed to maximise the amount of revenue the train company gets, in view of what each potential passenger is willing to pay. Clearly Virgin hope that the likes of business travellers are willing to pay £143 if arrival into Glagow by 13:00 is crucial for them (say, for an afternoon meeting), but accept that leisure travellers might not be willing to pay so much, and so also offer a service for £47. In this way they are maximising the amount of revenue they get from each kind of passenger.
In legal terms, there is no obligation on any train company to offer Advance tickets and so I guess we can be happy they decide nevertheless to offer them. Otherwise you'd be stuck paying £186.50 for the 08:30 and £146.00 for the 09:30, as that's the cost of the flexible through fare for each service. This price differential in terms of the cost of the flexible fare (which is even more marked if making a return journey, with the Anytime fare costing £373.00 return vs £147.00 for the Off-Peak) is no doubt an influencing factor in Virgin's decision about what tier of Advance tickets they release on a particular train.
You haven't specified the date you are travelling, but you may find that it is cheaper to obtain a combination of tickets as opposed to one through ticket. For example, it might cost less to get one ticket from London to Preston and another from Preston to Glasgow than to get one through ticket from London to Glasgow - even if you stay on the same train. There are websites that will work this out for you and sell you the combination, such as
www.trainsplit.com.