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Comment by kzar | Hacker News Reader

Cool, that looks really useful. The number of times I've had to fumble on thetrainline with patchy reception! Do you know any websites that figure out the cheapest combination of tickets to get you to your destination? (Sometimes buying several tickets for legs of your journey is cheaper than buying one ticket for it.)

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http://www.redspottedhanky.com/ is supposed to be quite good for that, though I've never used it.

Never use The Train Line. They charge a booking fee. Just your local train operator, they all use exactly the same system, same database, etc but you won't pay £1 to buy the ticket.

Oh I didn't use them to book, only to check which train I needed to catch.

In that case I just use National Rail, the website is well optimised for mobile.

I wrote my own, and my expenditure on trains has fallen from around ukp9000 pa to around ukp5000 pa. It's actively user hostile, occasionally inaccurate, slow, and cranky. A bit like me. But I'm currently on a journey for which I padi ukp18.00 instead of ukp27.40.

It's worth it for me. Email me for details. I will be slow to reply, but I will reply.

Do you know any websites that figure out the cheapest combination of tickets to get you to your destination?

There's an app for that: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/tickety-split/id513845919?mt...

Mobile web version: http://splitticket.moneysavingexpert.com/tool.php

Guide: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-train-tickets

Don't they all just work on published walk-up fares? My system also uses advances fares and relevant return and/or single journeys. I've never found an app or web site that uses the full range of options available.

Probably because (as I've discovered) it's hard.

Private Eye often have bon mots about how even the ticket offices don't offer people the cheapest ticket because they can't figure it out.

But when you have to deal with things like (eg, I'm hope I'm remembering this right from someone I know) "EUS-CDF being more expensive than EUS-SOT + SOT-CDF even though both halves are the same train as the EUS-CDF journey", you can see how no-one has a bloody clue.

Don't they all just work on published walk-up fares?

I must confess I've never used the app. I just read about it in the MSE email newsletter.

I grew up in London, and didn't often have reason to take a long distance train. I have a vague childhood memory of discovering that London and England weren't synonymous.

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