In my last post, I briefly mentioned spending part of a Sunday getting Bob, my dot, to research train tickets and collect the results in Google Sheets. There was quite a bit hidden in that sentence, time to unpack it a little, and think about how much better train ticket purchases could be if you actually want to optimize for something specific.

I had two trips to work out, some flexibility over when to travel, and an interest in reasonably priced First Class tickets (which I often see pop up, but no idea when to really expect them). I do these trips multiple times a month often on regular class tickets, and have been for the past few years, and often end up with all sorts of ticket purchases, advanced ones on the cheap, off peak returns, and many purchased last minute. I wanted to see the options without running slightly different versions of the same search myself, then trying to remember which one had produced the useful fare, over multiple days, multiple possible destination stations etc.

I’m expecting after writing this, someone might come and tell me about the perfect UK train ticket purchase and comparison website, but to my knowledge it doesn’t yet exist?

I ended up with hundreds of recorded comparisons of individual ticket prices, and four preferred direct trains costing on average £42.90 each (all for first class tickets), totaling £171 (Or £157 with split tickets). The off peak return price for these journeys would be £102.80, so only around £70 (or £50) more for 4 first class trains, which hopefully will mean that I actually get a seat on all of these trains, vs my last trip on Friday where I didn’t even get on the train as it was full…

The loose brief

The starting point was fairly ordinary. Two trips, approximate dates, one adult and no Railcard. There were three destination stations that would work for me, so fixing the search to one station would have thrown away useful options before we had even started.