Exclusive East Coast Trains discounts via Time Out

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• CliveJ says:

  13 Jul13 July 07:43

  Just been looking at the London – Peterborough route on Trainline for a Derby trip I am planning in September. The discounts aren’t much, £3 standard class and £5 first (plus the higher fares are not restricted to certain trains). The fares do say that they have limited availability so will no doubt go up soon, which is presumably why the Time Out offer is so short dated.

  Every little helps though and as I was looking to add a stopover to my return trip I may try Peterborough.

  • CliveJ says:

    13 Jul13 July 07:45

    Actually, ignore the bit about flexible tickets, they’re not.

• James Ward says:

  13 Jul13 July 08:30

  Rob – In case any of your readers aren’t sure about the value of the EC Rewards scheme, here’s an example. I just booked first class tickets York – Glasgow, Edinburgh – York for my partner and me. The cost: 1,400 points (and of course, unlike airlines, no tax). Had we paid the lowest available rate for the same trains, the fare would have been £325 (23.2p / point).

  With an earning rate of 1 point per £ in standard class and 1.5 points per £ in first, this is equivalent to a return of between 23p – 35p for each £ spent on travel. Great value!

  Availability was somewhat limited on the York to Glasgow route, but it was wide open to and from Edinburgh. Way better than most airline redemption availability.

  • Raffles says:

    13 Jul13 July 13:11

    It is also very good if you have kids. When you redeem, children aged 5-11 can be added for a small cash payment instead of points. It is either £10 or £20, I cant remember.

    Let’s say first class return to Edinburgh is £150. An adult and two kids (7 and 10) would be £450 for cash. With points it is only 700 points for the adult plus £40 or so in total for the kids.

    It is so cheap that I buy a seat for my 3 year old (to guarantee he gets one ) then buy a phantom 4th seat to guarantee they allocate us a table!

  • Chris says:

    13 Jul13 July 13:47

    James,

    Just a heads up for future reference. The only reason that the Glasgow availability is slim, is that East Coast only have one train per day each way that extend between Edinburgh and Glasgow. If you do the trip again try and get in as early as possible to get the availability. It’s a shame as they used to have one every two hours if memory serves.

    • James Ward says:

      13 Jul13 July 17:22

      Thanks for the tip! As it happens, this route suits us well as – inspired by last weekend’s Grand Départ – we’re cycling from Glasgow to Edinburgh. 58 miles in a day. Yikes.

    • Chris says:

      13 Jul13 July 21:30

      The Glasgow legs of the journeys were dropped in order to make the service more intense further south, also the EC trains were transporting air most of the time. Following the West Coast upgrade it was just as quick to go to Euston if you lived in Glasgow. At the same time the A2B (Airdrie to Bathgate line) was reintroduced which increased the number of services from Edinburgh to Glasgow to ten per hour.

      The EC paths were taken by Crosscountry as an extension to the Plymouth services. If travelling between Glasgow and Edinburgh its usually cheaper to buy an XC only ticket. Normally you can get a 1st single between the two cities for around £8 which is cheaper than a standard single with Scotrail.

• KARFA says:

  16 Jul16 July 09:04

  The East Coast promotion page said the deadline for booking was 15 July at midnight but the prmotion fares still seem to come up this morning so presume you can still book? The Timeout page for getting the link now says “sold out”.

• ChrisH says:

  16 Jul16 July 14:22

  Brother in law travels every week from Darlington and managed to have ~£400 on his return journeys over the normal advance prices every week until the end of the promo.

  Cheers for the heads up!

• KARFA says:

  17 Jul17 July 09:07

  The promotion page on eastcoast.co.uk and the promotion fares are still showing this morning. I managed to book some more last night and might book some more today – despite the booking dealine being stated as midnight on 15 July.

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