Shrimpsvoices

On Hodgies advice we have booked advance single tickets for this trip.

A standard Cheapday return from Lancaster is £33

Most of the trains from Lancaster are taking 2 hours to get to Crewe and some change at Manchester.

If you travel out at 0757 the single fare is just £5 and the 0857 is £10 ~ we have opted for the later one for an extra hour in bed! Both these journeys only take 1 hour. The later trains are £16.50p and £12.50p and take twice as long!

On the way back we have gone for the 1814 as it is only £6.50p. All the return trips take at least 2 hours and cost £26.50p for the return journey!!!

Seats are reserved so the £1 booking fee is worthwhile.

The 18.14 changes at Preston with a 40 minute wait but it gets back to Lancaster for 2054

Remember these prices are for advanced bookings as per:

http://www.thetrainline.com/buytickets/default.aspx

For those who perhaps decide at last minute to go to the Crewe game and don’t buy advance tickets, you can save around a tenner on normal fares by buying your tickets in two stages. Buy an off peak day return to Manchester from Lancaster costing you £14 and then an off peak day return from Manchester to Crewe for £8.60 – totalling £22.60 rather than the £33 Marky mentions. This is for those trains that change at Manchester.

Its worth mentioning that you can do the same for the Port Vale game – buying your tickets to Manchester and then from Manchester to Stoke which again saves you a considerable sum.

It's also worth mentioning that you should NEVER buy tickets thrugh the trainline. Use Virgin's site, www.virgintrains.com as you don't get charged a credit card fee.

marky wrote:It's also worth mentioning that you should NEVER buy tickets thrugh the trainline. Use Virgin's site, http://www.virgintrains.com as you don't get charged a credit card fee.

Which is strange is it not?

Please read the following in relation to http://www.virgintrainsfares.co.uk pages

The booking engine transactional pages - those with a web address prefixed by http://www.virgintrainsfares.co.uk - are, meanwhile, managed by Trainline and, as such, Trainline are responsible for the content in accordance with Trainline's terms and conditions set out below.

Customers purchasing a ticket(s) for travel are advised that they are entering into a contract with Trainline in accordance with the terms & conditions below and that, in these cases, any queries regarding the purchase of the ticket(s) should be directed to Trainline.

All very strange, qjump also uses thetrainline but while thetrainline will sell you one journey at a time, qjump lets you buy a few journies.

I'd avoid station ticket offices. Very recent example, 2 return tickets Lancaster - Edinburgh available online for £27 (£11 outward, £16 return). For whatever reason, they went to the Lancaster station to buy the tickets with details of the online prices and train times. The station sold them tickets at £14 and £19 for the same trains and said that the cheap advanced tickets must have sold out. I checked later that night, the £11 and £14 tickets were both available.

john L might be driving u there lol..............

ockers wrote:john L might be driving u there lol..............

I very much doubt he'll be driving me there

If anyone is travelling regularly by train with a junior it could be worth buying a family rail card. We paid £24 for one last year and by using it for last Saturday we paid £21 return from Lancaster to Euston for one adult and one child.

ALL of which is very, very strange and a complete farce.

I thought the idea was to try to get as many people as possible using trains and not our ozone polluting cars?

Why put so many obstacles in people's way?

One ticket per journey from one place to another, use whatever time train you want - they're never full anyway. Buy them however you want at no extra charge - including at the station - and you can reserve a seat in advance for a quid or two more.

Special offers off-peak to try to get more people using them, fair enough, but stop messing us about.

It's all very strange

In Germany you can buy a 30euro ticket and 4 people can travel anywhere round the country on either train, tram or bus all weekend so for £5 each you can go anywhere.

The only condition is you can't use the mainline trains only the regional ones that stop everywhere so if your going dow south it can take a while. So if Wolfsburg were playing at Munich 4 Wolfsberg fans can go there and back for £5 it might just take a very very long time.

In Sheffield I can buy a £3.50 ticket and travel all day on bus & tram. In Morecambe I can buy a return ticket to Lancaster for £3.70.

Both operated by Stagecoach.

Gnasher wrote:In Sheffield I can buy a £3.50 ticket and travel all day on bus & tram. In Morecambe I can buy a return ticket to Lancaster for £3.70.

Both operated by Stagecoach.

At least the bus in Morecambe/Lancaster might have Wayne and Jim on it

Our train journey back from London Victoria last Saturday night was fun.
Booked onto a direct train to Pompey Harbour at 2002, arriving in plenty of time to get a ferry across to Gosport.

Train set off on time.
Broke down at Horley, and we were all kicked off. Lots of nasty verbal nonsense to staff from a few idjits.
Changed platform, and onto a train to Horsham.
Had to change at Gatwick Airport.
No train to Pompey for over an hour.
Got on a train to Scumampton (change at Havant).
Train went nowhere for 30 minutes, as there were disruptive elements in another carriage, and the police had been called to deal with them.
Got to Havant, and waited for a train to Pompey.
Arrived at Pompey Harbour with 15 minutes to spare for our last ferry.

But at least it was cheap, £21 for the pair of us booking singles on specific trains.

Gnasher wrote:In Sheffield I can buy a £3.50 ticket and travel all day on bus & tram. In Morecambe I can buy a return ticket to Lancaster for £3.70.

Both operated by Stagecoach.

a day rider ticket is £4.10 which is cheaper than paying for a return ticket from heysham to lancaster also it can take over 30 mins to get there and thats when it is not busy!

Gnasher wrote:In Sheffield I can buy a £3.50 ticket and travel all day on bus & tram. In Morecambe I can buy a return ticket to Lancaster for £3.70.

Both operated by Stagecoach.

True, but Sheffield is in a PTE area where fares are often subsidised. Stagecoach also compete with First in Sheffield, whereas there is no such competition in Lancaster. In fact, Stagecoach have a monopoly in large swathes of the North West.

When it comes to public transport, especially buses, I'm no expert. All I see is it costs half the price to do a similar journey in Sheffield as it does in Lancaster/Morecambe with the same company. I thought we were supposed to be encouraged to use public transport.

Gnasher wrote:When it comes to public transport, especially buses, I'm no expert. All I see is it costs half the price to do a similar journey in Sheffield as it does in Lancaster/Morecambe with the same company. I thought we were supposed to be encouraged to use public transport.

How naive of you Brian, of course we are encouraged to go on to public transport - so we can subsidize the areas Stagecoach don't have a monopoly

It still freaks me out sometimes looking in the car mirror and seeing a tram inches off the rear bumper Braking in the wet with one pair of wheels on steel rails makes you realise how sticky tarmac is

ockers wrote:john L might be driving u there lol..............

Day off booked, Sean, as a precaution! Looking forward to visiting Gresty Road!

As regards timings, my post near the bottom of http://www.ttpics.co.uk/shrimpsvoices/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3813&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=crewe&start=25 shows valid times.

I have just priced up to singles and have come to a total of £22.50, £12.50 going at about 9.50 I think it was and £10.00 coming back just after 6pm.

P/T Indie wrote:I have just priced up to singles and have come to a total of £22.50, £12.50 going at about 9.50 I think it was and £10.00 coming back just after 6pm.

I just hope there's a Weatherspoons in Crewe for big breakfast , its a long time from 9 till 3 . Dont think Crewe is renound for many places of interest or is it .

parceldave wrote:

P/T Indie wrote:I have just priced up to singles and have come to a total of £22.50, £12.50 going at about 9.50 I think it was and £10.00 coming back just after 6pm.

I just hope there's a Weatherspoons in Crewe for big breakfast , its a long time from 9 till 3 . Dont think Crewe is renound for many places of interest or is it .

I don't think you are taking into account the 1 hours journey time there, WVM.

parceldave wrote:

P/T Indie wrote:I have just priced up to singles and have come to a total of £22.50, £12.50 going at about 9.50 I think it was and £10.00 coming back just after 6pm.

I just hope there's a Weatherspoons in Crewe for big breakfast , its a long time from 9 till 3 . Dont think Crewe is renound for many places of interest or is it .

you could have a ride round on the buses see how much the price difference is between Crewe and simlar distance journeys round here

morecambe mick wrote:

parceldave wrote:

P/T Indie wrote:I have just priced up to singles and have come to a total of £22.50, £12.50 going at about 9.50 I think it was and £10.00 coming back just after 6pm.

I just hope there's a Weatherspoons in Crewe for big breakfast , its a long time from 9 till 3 . Dont think Crewe is renound for many places of interest or is it .

I don't think you are taking into account the 1 hours journey time there, WVM.

Im going on 7.57 Mick , dont it get there at 9 ish.

You quoted P/T Indie who said he was going later, and you didn't mention any time that you yourself were going at.

My misunderstanding, but an easy one to comprehend.