Theo Markettos wrote:
... and if you do that it's always worth bearing in mind that your 'gold
card' season ticket *counts* as a network rail card, so gives you a
third off for off-peak travel. And you can get that discount for up to
three (I think) people travelling with you, too. And you can each
upgrade to first class for ?3 (subject to various T&Cs). The folk at Ely
train station tell me that I'm about the only person to ask for the
discount ... which might have something to do with it not being very
well advertised...

And if this is the sort of thing you do often but don't have a Gold Card,
you can buy a Gold Card from Ryde St John's Road to Ryde Esplanade for
112ukp, which also gets you a network card discount with no ten-pound
minimum fare M-F. Trips to the Isle of Wight not required.


Although this is (pretty much) only worth doing instead of paying £20
for a Network Card if you:
a) make somewhere around 40[*] sub-£15 trips a year within the
Network area that involve leaving after 10AM; or:
b) care about the off-peak first-class upgrade bit.

Since acquiring my Network Card I've run into problem (a) once [**],
and I use the London-suburban rail network a lot.
[*] if the average sub-£15 trip costs £7.50, the average saving you'd
get with a Gold Card but not a Network Card is £2.50.

[**] actually the combination of problem (a) and my own stupidity - I
could have bought a Saver for the relevant journey, which would have
brought me above the crucial £15 undiscounted barrier, but the Saver
fare was 50p more than the price of two cheap singles and I forgot
about the £10 minimum until the final screen on the machine. At which
point I pressed "confirm" and put my card in anyway before realising
what I'd done...

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org