The typical UK resident makes 17 train journeys a year. This probably sounds a lot if you don’t commute by rail, and not very many if you do commute by rail.

Try taking the train for longer journeys, especially when you don’t need a car at the far end, for example when visiting a city. You may find there are sometimes delays, but have you ever travelled by car and not suffered a delay of some sort on a long trip? It can be very relaxing on the train providing you don’t end up sitting next to the guy with 8 cans of lager in his carrier bag, so lets see how you can make it cheaper and easier.

When buying train tickets remember:

• Don’t just turn up at the station and expect to get a good deal: there are some real bargains to be had by booking in advance

• You can often (usually?) find better deals on the internet than you get offered on the phone or at the booking office

• 2 single tickets are often much cheaper than one return

• just because no return tickets are available doesn’t mean there are no single tickets available for the same trip – keep searching

• by splitting your journey ticket-wise, you can often save money (i.e. buying multiple tickets for different parts of a one-way journey can be cheaper than one ticket for the full trip)

• only pay peak price for parts of the journey that are in peak time (by splitting tickets)

• buy a railcard if you qualify, especially for tickets costing more than £60 in total (you get one third off the price of the tickets and the railcard costs £20 maximum).

If you don’t have time to wait for your tickets to be delivered by mail, use the fast ticket machine at mainline stations to collect your tickets.

National Rail Enquires has a reliable journey planner, and allow you to buy train tickets via the rail companies. They also have a special offers by region section

Virgin Trains allow you to plan a journey and buy tickets (for any train, not just Virgin), and I have found the tickets are often a pound or so cheaper than other sites.

The Train Line cover UK, and European train travel. They also now own the Qjump website . Which seems to use the same engine (computer engine, not steam engine).

For European rail travel try:

Rail Europe

International Rail

European Rail

For an useful advice on UK, European and worldwide rail travel, and many more links, try Mark Smith’s excellent Man in Seat 61 .