On 19/02/2016 11:17, Robin9 wrote:
I don't travel much by rail these days except in London.
I'm completely out of touch with buying train tickets to
places like Birmingham and Bristol. In my day it was all
pretty simple; you just turned up and bought your ticket.
There was the very occasional special offer: a friend and I
went from Euston to Glasgow Central on an early train for
£5.00 day return! That was more than forty years ago! (We
wanted to visit St. Mungo's Cathedral)

There are web sites providing train fare offers but which are
the best ones? Am I correct in assuming that some will offer
less than ideal rates because they receive a commission from
train companies? Do they all work this angle?

No, you're not correct.

All sites essentially offer the same selection of tickets, but the
booking sites of some train companies offer (small) discounts on Advance
fares (for travel on specified trains), so long as the journey (or most
of it) is on their own trains. Virgin Trains East Coast and East
Midlands Trains do this.

Some train companies also have temporary offers where flexible tickets
for travel on their trains might be reduced.

(The following two paragraphs are probably more info than you need... so
skip to the final paragraph!)

However there are a few ongoing ticket offerings which are only
available from the train company's own booking site - e.g. Virgin Trains
West Coast half-fares (when bought as part of a return journey); or
Virgin Trains East Coast Super Off-Peak Single web-only fare (what a
mouthful!), which must be bought at least a day in advance. Neither of
these ticket offerings have any sort of explanation on their websites!

There are also "Megatrain" tickets, which are only offered on a limited
number of South West Trains, East Midlands Trains and Virgin Trains West
Coast journeys (though apparently not on the latter until the Lamington
Viaduct is fixed). They are only available via the
http://www.megatrain.com website.


(The final paragraph follows!...)

The best approach is to buy your tickets from the booking site of the
train company that you'll be travelling on for all or the majority of
your journey. Do *not* buy from the Trainline or RedSpottedHanky or
other sites that impose booking and credit card fees - there is no need
to pay a booking fee (by doing so are just helping them fund their
all-pervasive advertising!).