Travel expert shares how to 'hack the train system' to get a much cheaper fare

Tired of paying over the odds on rail fare and journeying by car instead? A travel expert may have the solution for you - with a savvy way of cutting costs on short and long distance trips.

Cheap holiday guru Chelsea took to TikTok to explain that she's discovered a way of "hacking the system" using her "train splitting" method. "This is when you buy two or more train tickets that make up your full journey, that end up being cheaper than if you just bought 1 ticket from start to finish," she began.

"Fortunately, lots of websites do this for you now - including Trainline, TrainPal and Virgin Trains Ticketing - and so it’s pretty easy to do." In video footage of an example, Chelsea explained that she booked a single ticket to Crewe [from London] where she waited an hour, before embarking on a second train to Carlisle.

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"What they don’t currently do is highlight when you could split your ticket between standard and first class!" she emphasised. "And that’s what this hack is all about!" In doing so, she was able to treat her partner James to first class travel on the second part of their journey - and still saved money overall.

"Let me explain what I've done here," she said to her followers. "Our journey was from London to Carlisle, where an advanced first class ticket is £113.40. So I looked through all the stops on our journey to see if there was anywhere that was cheap to get a standard single to - and cheap to get a first class ticket from - Crewe was that sweet spot."

Chelsea also detailed: "You could book both tickets for the same train, but for our journey it was much cheaper to get an earlier and faster train to Crewe