Title: An insider's guide to cheap rail tickets | Travel | The Guardian
Headings: An insider's guide to cheap tickets
Travel
An insider's guide to cheap tickets
Patrick Barkham
@patrick_barkham
Six journeys, six tricks
Tactics

Content: Of course, there's nothing more frustrating than failing to get cheap offers if you have had the forethought to book in advance. According to public transport consultant Barry Doe, train companies are better than airlines in terms of the number of bargain seats. But, crucially, they are not obliged to provide cheap seats on every train. Look for a £10 single from Birmingham to London on a busy Friday train and you probably won't find one, even weeks in advance. It is difficult to know the best time to grab a cheap advance ticket, but train companies must set their timetables 12 weeks in advance and that is when cheap tickets are usually released, so searching exactly 12 weeks before your journey is one good tactic. But engineering works often delays timetables and can mean that cheap tickets are not made available until four or five weeks ahead. The only solution is to keep checking prices online. Most of us, however, can't or don't want to plan our trips 12 weeks ahead. Just 17% of journeys made are with advance purchase tickets, according to Doe; the other 83% are pricey walk-on fares.