HOW TO CUT YOUR TRAIN FARE

Mark Palmer bluffs his way through the

moral and financial maze of buying the cheapest rail ticket

'DAY return to Preston, please.'

'Leaving after 10 a.m.?' asked a uni- formed man in the Virgin ticket office at Euston.

'No, I'm getting the 9.33,' I said.

'That will be £155 then, sir.'

Very funny. Virgin probably tells its sales staff to say things like that, especially on Monday mornings in mid-summer after it has rained all weekend and your throat is tightening in anticipation of your being flat on your back within 48 hours. Good, deadpan delivery. Made me smile. Nice effort, but let's get on with it, train leaves in ten minutes, need to pick up a coffee and Danish pastry before getting on board.

'How much is it really?'

'£155, sir, but if you go after 10 a.m. it's £50.'

I had a meeting arranged for 12.30 p.m. in Preston. The 9.33 would get me in at 12.29, so I was already cutting it fine. It would have to be the 9.33 and it would have to be £155. Huge sum of money. Enough to go back and forth to Barcelona a couple of times on easyJet. But, then again, it wasn't my money. I was being sent to Preston by a newspaper to interview the chairman of a supermarket chain, and, although the £155 receipt might raise an eyebrow in the expenses department, I would be reim- bursed without any questions asked.

But there had to be an alternative. Bet- ter to have tried something on and failed than never to have tried at all.

'I would like a single to Rugby,' I said.

'But I thought you were going to Pre- ston,' said the man sitting behind a wall of thick glass and speaking through a micro- phone, his Virgin badge slightly askew.

'Changed my mind.'

'Then that will be DS,' he said, wearing the same look as the cashier at the Gau- mont cinema in Reading circa 1970 when I was trying to get into an X-rated film. It's the on-you-go-then-but-it-wasn't-me- who-sold-you-the-ticket sort of expression. The plan was this: arrive at Rugby after the 10 a.m. peak-time watershed, disem- bark, gathering up my personal belongings with me. Stand on the platform at Rugby for all of ten seconds, take a deep breath and get back on, settling down in a differ-

ent seat from the one I had just vacated.

It was a crowded train and I began to wonder what my fellow passengers would make of seeing me getting off and on again. I could pretend to be in a middle- aged daze, not quite knowing the differ- ence between Rugby and Preston, but that wouldn't wash and, anyway, almost every person in my carriage would be on a dif- ferent rate — savers, special-value tickets, booked-two-weeks-in-advance tickets, rail- card tickets. I was just trying to create my own supersaver.

Graham, our 'on-board assistant', intro- duced himself over the Tannoy and I realised that he was the man who might or might not rumble me. When he did the rounds, I showed him my single to Rugby, but found it difficult to look him in the eye. The train pulled into Rugby and off I shuffled, hopping back on board a few sec- onds later and finding myself a new seat. Within what seemed like minutes, Graham reappeared.

'Return to Preston,' I said, 'but I would like to go all the way back to London.'

'Then you'd be best to buy a £50 return as if you have come from London,' he said. But I have come from London, I wanted to say, but somehow the words wouldn't come out. So he gave me my new ticket. Total expenditure /85: a saving of £70. The expenses department would be pleased.

It happens all the time, apparently. And no one quite knows if it's a fair cop or not. The Fares Manual, which the rail companies have to produce every now and then, comes in five volumes with an appendix of impene- trable terms and conditions at the back.

When I called Virgin's customer rela- tions department (`Sorry, we are unable to take your call at this time, you are held in a queue and will be answered shortly') they didn't have a view one way or the other. 'I think you can do that,' said the customer relations consultant, who introduced her- self as `Jackie-how-can-I-help you'. Later, a Virgin spokesman confirmed that my manoeuvre was 'legal but not practical', which made me wonder why his company's sales staff don't present passengers with this option, however impractical it may be.

'If 20 people had got out at Rugby as you did and tried to get back on again, 18 would have missed the train because it only stops for three minutes,' he said.

Deregulation, market forces and viewing life as one big shopfront are all very well, but they don't make for an easy life. My brother, who lives in the Scottish borders, takes the train most Mondays from Berwick upon Tweed to London but buys a ticket from Edinburgh — an hour further away — because it works out cheaper.

But that's nothing. Radio Five Live's evening rush-hour programme has been inundated with calls and emails from peo- ple faced with far more farcical anomalies. One man reported how he bought a stan- dard return from Coventry to London for £72, but a few days later flew from Birm- ingham to Dublin for £12 less. 'It's not sur- prising Branson has gone quiet recently,' he told listeners. 'If his damned balloon came over my house, it would definitely be air-rifle time.'

Another London commuter, travelling from Bath each morning, was paying £68 before he caught on to the idea of buying a return ticket only as far as Didcot and then another from Didcot to London. A saving of more than £20. Feeling guilty — but not overly so — he contacted Great Western Trains and owned up. He was read a sec- tion from the National Conditions of Car- riage document, which explained: 'If you make the journey by any other route, except when travelling by a Through Train, you will be liable to pay the difference between the price of your ticket and the price of the cheapest ticket(s) available for immediate travel that would have allowed you to travel by that route. For the purpos- es of this condition a Through Train is one which may be used by a passenger to make his/her entire journey.'

So now we know. But what exactly? That buying a ticket on a train in Britain is like entering a terrifying maze, especially if you're spending your own money. Even the sales people waiting for the telephone to ring in a call-centre on the outskirts of Glas- gow aren't sure of the rules. When you press them for the cheapest possible option, they invariably end up asking if you are prepared to stay a Saturday night somewhere, which miraculously cuts the fare in half.

I wish I didn't have to count the pennies, because if money were no object I could simply have bought an open first-class return from Euston to Preston. The price? £241, but free coffee and Danish all the way to Lancashire.