Karen

I'm planning on taking several day trips from London and am trying to determine the fares for the trips. The railtrack.uk website has a great ability to determine times, but it says to call a UK phone number for price. I live in the USA and don't want to call. Anyone know a place that has both times and costs?<BR><BR>TIA!

Lori

Try www.thetrainline.com

Lori

I hit enter before I was done.<BR>www.thetrainline.com gives times, and a variety of prices, just follow the menu and it's all there. I've used them to check times and prices many times.

Karen

Great site. Thanks for the recommendation.

Nigel Doran

I understand that ringing the UK from the US might be expensive, but please bear in mind that it could well turn out to be a false economy. This is because the train ticketing system is complicated, with all sorts of different types of ticket with different restrictions, and phoning the Trainline might help you sort out what you want and save you (possibly a lot of) money. Ring late, when it is cheaper for you, since the Trainline is open till 10pm. <BR>If you have any other questions, or want to post a routing, then do so and people here will help. <BR>As a rule of thumb, travel on Fridays and is 1/3 more expensive, Apex-style tickets have to be prebooked and one-way (single) tickets are not necessarily half the price of return (round trip). Also, first class is not really worth it unless you are travelling for more than 4 hours and even then only if you get a good Apex-style ticket. With journeys under one hour, turning up at the station and buying a ticket is fine, but for anything over that, on-the-day tickets will be more expensive than booking ahead. <BR>See how confusing it can be?

Paul

Apex fare is cheap but requiring buy it 7 days in advance. Is there any way that I can buy online and collect ticket in the station. I live in US. Iit will be too late for me to buy APEX fare ticket when arrive in London.<BR>Thanks for help.

John

Karen,<BR>Since you're planning several trips you might want to check if a BritRail Pass would be more economical. There are different types &amp; prices of passes, but all of them will get you unlimited and unrestricted time of day travel . You need to purchase these passes before you leave the US, they will be shipped to your US address.

Dave

There is (or recently was) a Britrail &quot;Days Out from London&quot; pass that is valid for rail journeys in the Southeast, (bounded roughly by Portsmouth-Oxford-Peterborough-Cambridge, I THINK).

xxx

Here's the US URL for Brit Rail<BR>http://www.britrail.com/index_us.html

lm

I know a lot of people dislike raileurope because of their fees but I always get a Britrail flexipass for 4 days. It's around $260 for the standard class pass and all the fees but it's worth it because you can take any train you want on any day at any time as long as the train is not sold out. I used my pass to travel London-Edinburgh, London-York, London-Bath, London-Brighton on a 12 day trip to the UK. It's great for travel on a whim and if you price out a round trip ticket from London to Edinburgh and London to York without any advance purchase, the pass more than pays for itself. I probably shouldn't mention this but you can actually stretch a 4 day pass to last a bit longer with an erasable pen. I know it's dishonest but hey, the money I spend in the towns I visit may be helping the tourism economy. If you have a shorter stay in Britain and only plan on visiting 2 towns, point to point tickets may be a better option.

John

I have been buying my Brit Rail passes from the same company since 1991 and have never been charged any extra fees ( other than shipping ).<BR>The company has a web page now<BR>http://www.railpass.com