If you were following my Twitter feed yesterday, you’d be aware that British Airways and National Express caused enough chaos together to almost make me blow my top (with British Airways ‘meh’ attitude to luggage delivery at its out-stations, and National Express’s agent only wanting to sell full priced coach tickets.
CrossCountry Voyager at Manchester Piccadilly – Image, Economy Class and Beyond
Thankfully – Manchester is well-connected in terms of transportation companies and trains operators.
Some train companies do special deals on their tickets – called “Advance” tickets that have restrictions on them. These tickets lock you to a train at a specified date and time.
But did you know with some train companies – you can buy them on the day?
A few companies allow this including:
- CrossCountry (Connecting cities and towns outside London)
- Grand Central (Connecting London to Bradford and Sunderland)
- Greater Anglia (Connecting London to East Anglia)
- Northern (North of England local and regional services)
- TransPennine Express (Between NorthWest England/Scotland and North East Engand)
- Virgin East Coast (Express services to up to Scotland via York)
- Virgin West Coast (Express services to up to Scotland via Crewe)
- Caledonian Sleeper (Sleeper train services via Crewe)
My ticket was booked on-line with CrossCountry trains on the day for £19 for a one-way ticket (and if truth be known, I did this as I was on a local train from Manchester Airport to Manchester Piccadilly).
This compares with £36.10 for a standard single ticket.
An Advance ticket brought on the day – Image, Economy Class and Beyond
Services like this have their place, when others hang you out to dry – and this allows me to get to Birmingham in comfort, whilst not costing a small planetoid.
And yes – the train departed on time, and arrived on-time in Birmingham.
For the icing on the cake, the train costed less than a new coach ticket… and arrived quicker than the coach…
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Minor observation – “costed” is not a word. Should be “cost”