Search Engine For Cheaper Rail Fare's?

Question

Is there a site (I have looked) that will advise you of the best value/cheapest rail fare's, that is unbiassed?

Any help appreciated

Answer 1

You don't say what country you are in. But in the UK www.thetrainline.com is pretty good at directing you towards the cheaper fares. If you look up a train time it will list all the fares options, often pointing out it can be cheaper to buy two singles.

Answer 2

As has been mentioned, there was a very good site that checked but it was very slow and crashed their university network after it got a mention on the UK newsgroup uk.railway

National Rail will give you unbiased ticket suggestions, but will always link you to thetrainline to buy as that is the only authorised online ticket seller.

If you go to Qjump (which used to be independant), it is just thetrainline with a slightly different front-end.

Strangely enough, the national rail website is run by ATOC (Association of Train Operating Companies) and it is actually banned from selling tickets!

It is however looking into licensing two more firms to sell tickets alongside thetrainline, which may or may not lead to improvements to customers, as ticket prices are fixed by the train operators and any discounts given would have to come out of these websites operating costs

Answer 3

There is also Fastrack Tickets and National Travel Helpline

Answer 4

Avoid the trainline as they have a service charge...

Best is www.nationalrail.co.uk or any train company website - by law they have to be impartial and sell tickets for any service by any operator

There was a search engine that checked to see if combinations of tickets were cheaper - but it was taken offline as it was a students project hosted on a university server and was overloading the entire university