I am planning to take a train from London to Edinburgh on March 17th. When I go to www.nationalrail.co.uk I get a nice selection of train times but when I go to check fares and availability none of the cheaper fares seem to be available. They say they are for trips of over 120 miles (which this is) and you must buy them at least 7 days ahead (which this is). Someone told me they didn't become available until 60 days ahead of time, but now I'm in that time period and I still can't find anything under 90£. The cheaper fares listed are 39£, £59, etc. How can I get those?

I ended up paying 55 pounds return with my student rail card, and I remember when at booking some cheaper tickets were grayed out. I think it may be a function of the days of the week you are travelling. Try thetrainline.com as an alternative to National Rail. Or, depending on where you live (i.e. if it's Europe), just go into a station and ask. Good luck!

PS: Again, depending on where you are, you could fly RyanAir into Glasgow, see Glasgow for a bit, and then take the train over and back to Edinburgh. These two cities are pretty close together.

My advice is to keep waiting and watching. I have had situations where I waited and waited for the cheap fares, despairing that they would ever be available, when they suddenly showed up 4 weeks before planned travel time.

Of course, you could be planning to travel at a particularly busy time and the GNER may not release any cheap tickets at all.

Are you using Qjump? There used to be a feature there where you could ask to be shown for which trains, if any, the cheap fares were available.

I recently booked tix to Edinburgh also. (Leaving in 18 days!!!) You can go to the gner website, and sign up for an option that will email you when tickets for your date go on sale. According to their website today, they are only booking until Friday, March 11th.

Yea! As if today I see fares for 25 pounds on thetrainline.com and 39 on nationalrail.co.uk. They say you can buy tickets at those prices up to 7 days before travel. So now my question is - do I need to jump on this immediately? Are these fares likely to disappear (like airfares do)? Or can I wait a few weeks and be reasonable assured they will still be available. thanks

They have put an unknown, but limited number of tickets on at that price. When they are gone, they are gone. I would buy as soon as I was sure of the date and time I wanted to travel.