Fed up with the ever-increasing rail fare costs in the UK and travelling more by car instead? A travel expert might have just the solution for you, revealing a clever trick to save money on both short and long distance trips.
Chelsea, a budget holiday expert, shared her “train splitting” method on TikTok, explaining how she’s found a way to “hack the system”. She said: “This is when you buy two or more train tickets that makeup your full journey, that end up being cheaper than if you just bought one ticket from start to finish.”
She added that many websites, including Trainline, TrainPal and Virgin Trains Ticketing, now offer this service, making it easy to achieve. In a video, Chelsea demonstrated how she booked a single ticket to Crewe from London, waited an hour, then boarded a second train to Carlisle and made a significant cash saving.
She highlighted that these services don’t currently show when you could split your ticket between standard and first class, which is what her hack is all about. By doing this, she was able to treat her partner James to first class travel on the second part of their journey and still reduced expenditure overall.
Chelsea explained to her followers: “Our journey was from London to Carlisle, where an advanced first class ticket is £113.40. So I looked through all the stops on our journey to see if there was anywhere that was cheap to get a standard single to – and cheap to get a first class ticket from – Crewe was that sweet spot.”
Chelsea revealed her train ticket hack, saying: “You could book both tickets for the same train, but for our journey it was much cheaper to get an earlier and faster train to Crewe – hence why we had to wait an hour. So I booked the two trains separately and it worked out at £60.85, which is an absolute bargain [a saving of £52.55 each].”
In her video’s caption, she provided a step-by-step guide:
- Find out how much it would cost to book first class in full – I recommend booking well in advance if you’re interested in this as sometimes you can get a good deal for the whole journey!
- Find out all the possible stops on your journey – for ours there were actually 2 train options, a fast and a slow train, and so I checked all of them
- Search for singles between your departure point and your final destination, noting the standard price and the first class price. I ended up using LNER to do this as they clearly show the first class cost at the same time as the standard one
She concluded: “And then it’s simply a case of seeing if you can spot a ‘cheap’ first class leg!”
The nifty trick earned acclaim from Chelsea’s followers, with one endorsing: “Definitely would do this, it’s not like it’s was £5 of a difference, it’s a good saving. Awesome.” Another weighed in with their own experience of split-ticketing: “I used to deliver cars for a living and would use to trains to go pick a car up or get home after delivery. I saved so much money by split ticketing. Ticket prices are insane if you pay full whack.”
A third TikTok user approved of the approach: “It’s a good option. It would be perfect for someone who can’t sit for the whole journey and needs a break anyway and/or if the station is near something worth a short visit.”
Whilst a fourth shared their success story: “Yep I split trips up when buying tickets. Split fare was £30 for two to go from Coventry to York, the solid trip was £150 – it’s ridiculous.”
