Travel hack allows city residents to save small fortune on London train
Bizarre money-saving loophole on trains between the two capitals
A new hack enables travellers to save £40 on train fares from Edinburgh to London – by doing one simple thing.
The Independent newspaper uncovered a bizarre rail fare anomaly that means some passengers booking trains from Auld Reekie to the Big Smoke are often forking out twice as much money, depending on which Edinburgh train station they depart from.
“Anyone searching for a Saturday morning train from Edinburgh Waverley to London King’s Cross on the LNER website is told that the cheapest fare is £200 one way,” writes The Independent. “The state-owned train operator quotes only the ‘Anytime’ fare, even though Saturday is an off-peak day. The traveller will need to broaden the search to ‘London Terminals’ to become aware of a direct train on Avanti West Coast from Edinburgh to London Euston, for which the fare is £125.”
Even this is much more than passengers need to pay, says the paper. “The Avanti West Coast train stops at Haymarket station, just over one mile west of Edinburgh Waverley station. Passengers for London who board here pay only £91, saving £34 on the fare from the Scottish capital’s main station,” the report continued.
“Stranger still, with that same £91 ticket they could instead board a train in the other direction, to Edinburgh Waverley, and connect to any of the London King’s Cross services currently showing as costing £200. Other passengers on the same train could be paying more than twice as much.”
Other passengers on the same train could be paying more than twice as much
Keen to check this out for ourselves, we logged onto the LNER website and searched for Edinburgh to London trains on Friday, April 19. We found that a train from Edinburgh arriving at London King’s Cross at 12:39 is priced at £135.10, if departing from Waverley station (at 8am). But the fare was only £87.90 if departing from Haymarket station (at 7:48am). That’s a difference of £47.20.
So, next time you plan to take a train to London, search for tickets departing from Haymarket instead of Waverley – and you could save yourself a small fortune. And you don’t even need to board at Haymarket, as long as that’s the primary departure point on your ticket.