Website to find cheapest ticket with slower trains

[petter2]

Hi,
Is there any website which looks for cheaper trains by splitting the journey and taking slower trains?
I don't mean the standard journey splitting, where you take the fastest train and then check if it is cheaper to buy tickets for that fast train.
I want to travel on the 23rd of August from London to Manchester, leaving after 3pm and arriving before 7pm.
There are loads of options I found so far:
Virgin direct
London Midland to Crewe/Stafford/Stoke and then Northern or Cross Country
East Midland Trains or Grand Central or Hull Trains to Doncaster or Sheffield and then Northern or First Transpennie Express
But is there any website where I can enter London to Manchester and I get these slower trains displayed without having to search manually for all those combinations?
Thanks

 

[causton]

Trainsplit.com for that date shows those routes, you can tick "include slower cheaper routes" and press "intensive search" which found mostly changing at Crewe, but one changing off the Grand Central at Doncaster!

 

[mmh]

Trainsplit.com is generally very good for this, the options to check for slower routes often return unexpected possibilities in my experience. Sometimes if the results aren't what you expected they can also open your eyes to combinations you'd not thought of. It's very useful.

Disclaimer: I'm in no way connected, I just find it very useful. Its user interface is somewhat clunky in places - it's certainly not had the money thrown at it of, say, a trainline based site but in a way that's better. It doesn't hide/exclude options for simplicity's sake.

(I'd recommend it to an enthusiast or someone willing to research - which by default I think means almost everyone on here surely! I'd be in two minds though if I was asked to recommend a site by someone daunted by ticketing)

 

[yorkie]

Alternatively is if you prefer to look for itineraries first and then see the prices, use www.fastjp.com, specifying the TOCs you want (e.g. you may want to do Manchester to London avoiding Virgin, or you may want to select WMT and Northern only) and once you know the settings you require, put them into Trainsplit.

You can also specify additional interchange time for any station (the value you specify is added to the minimum interchange times).

(I'd recommend it to an enthusiast or someone willing to research - which by default I think means almost everyone on here surely! I'd be in two minds though if I was asked to recommend a site by someone daunted by ticketing)

They could try the app, which doesn't have the advanced options of the website and is simple to use.

 

[petter2]

Thanks, Trainsplit was great!
Found a flexible super-off-peak return ticket for 23.10 with West Midland Trains and Transport for Wales via Crewe, only takes 1 hour longer each way compared to Virgin.
https://trainsplit.com/TicketDetail...ketCode=OPR&Route=00371&TicketDate=23/08/2019
The only weird thing is that I can't find this ticket on BRfares or the Mixing Deck (for example https://tickets.gwr.com/gw/en/journeyplanning/mixingdeck), any reason for this? Those are the first points where I look and could have saved me quite a bit of time instead of searching for advance fares.

 

[Paul Kelly]

Found a flexible super-off-peak return ticket for 23.10 with West Midland Trains and Transport for Wales via Crewe, only takes 1 hour longer each way compared to Virgin.

What is the exact journey (i.e. origin and destination stations)?

 

[petter2]

Euston to Manchester Piccadilly with Railcard discount

 

[Paul Kelly]

That's a very nice fare; good find. It is available for travel from 12 August onwards, but BR Fares only shows current fares, which is why you can't see it on there. TOCs are only supposed to change fares 3 times per year in January, May or September (unless correcting a mistake) but this does not seem to be enforced any more and so unpredictable things like this can happen!
The GWR site doesn't show it because it only shows the fastest trains by default, and as you have noted this option is a lot slower.

 

[Paul Kelly]

Another thought I just had is that perhaps WMT did not mean to make the fare available until the next fares change date in September, and have accidentally released it early. If I were you, if I hadn't already bought it I would probably buy it now, just in case it disappears again before your date of travel.

 

[BR Fares]

I don't mean the standard journey splitting, where you take the fastest train and then check if it is cheaper to buy tickets for that fast train.
I want to travel on the 23rd of August from London to Manchester, leaving after 3pm and arriving before 7pm.

This is exactly the kind of thing we think railway passengers should be informed more clearly about; we alluded to this in our recent blog post on the subject.