Cheapest ticket

Just doing a few promotional things about the FGW Taunton-Bishops Lydeard shuttles on 8/9 June which have a flat fare of £5 (return or single) and I wondered if £5 was the cheapest fare for a turn-up-on-the-day adult ticket on the West Somerset Railway. So I checked the fares tables and came up with, what I think is, a fare of £4 which is the standard adult fare for a single journey from Dunster to Minehead (roughly a mile and a half). Edit: now find £3.40 for a single from Doniford to Williton (or to Watchet)

Then I wondered what the cheapest "standard" fare for an adult who turns up on the day is on other "heritage" railways. Over to you lot (it's not meant to be a "we are best" race, folks)

Steve

 

Can't beat that, though our cheapest "turn up and go", non-privilege etc ticket for a single station to station journey is less per mile than that, because the distances between our stations are greater.

Interestingly, apparently since getting to East Grinstead, we have noticed a big increase in sales of "local resident" discount cards. These allow half-price travel for people in certain local postcode areas. It turns out, that at half-price, an all-line 3rd return for a single resident of, say, Horsted Keynes or Chailey, with free parking at the station, is competetive with the cost of driving a twenty mile return trip and parking charges at EG!

Tom

 

A single Adult ticket at Middleton costs the princely sum of £2.50, a bit cheaper than the WSR's cheapest ticket both in terms of cost and cost/mile but I'd agree that we aren't comparing like for like.

 

And we've been told in no uncertain terms on another thread that heritage railways are pure entertainment, nothing more & nothing less!!

 

Spa Valley Railway adult single Groombridge to High Rocks is £2.50p for a journey of approx.2 miles.

 

Good news on the "local resident" front. Useful revenue for the railway although wouldn't a resident of Chailey have a long wait for a train?

 

About fifty years. Still competitive with a drive into Haywards Heath on a Saturday afternoon, though ...

Tom

 

I seem to remember the North Norfolk used to have some pretty reasonable fares a few years back, even cheaper if you went for the "diesel only" option which allowed you to go into town and back on the first/last trains of the day which were often railbus operated at a reduced price.

Unsure if things have changed but it seemed to encourage use by those who didn't want to park in Sheringham and had no interest in steam/heritage whatsoever!

 

NNR offer days rovers for £6 on blue timetable days, usually in winter and giving 6 return diesel trips. For the diesel running days in February, a full day allowed 63 miles of diesel haulage (if that's your thing) for £6, at just over 9.5p/mile! A lot of locals seemed to be using the trains too.

 

The MNR can't quite match the NNR on the off peak day rover price, with the MNR charging £7 on 'orange' off peak timetable days (44 days in 2013), however all the station to next station singles on those days are just £2 for adults (discounts are also given to local railcard holders!). The distances between the stations varies from just under 2 miles (Dereham to Yaxham) to over 3 miles (Thuxton to Kimberley) - http://www.mnr.org.uk/calendar/timetables/orange.html