Secret saving on London travels with Network Railcard

If you live in the UK you should be familiar with the railcards, as they give you a discount of 34% on the (ridiculously) expensive train tickets. I was once young too and had the 16-25 / 25-30 railcards, but those good times are gone.

A less useful or known one is the Network Railcard. It is available to anyone, but has tougher restrictions. It is valid only in Southeast England, and there’s a £13 minimum fare for travelling on weekdays.

It still has value though, as it covers a few major cities including London, Birmingham, Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol and Brighton. The reduction also works on airport trains to/from Luton, Stansted and Gatwick.

Even if you don’t travel outside London, the Network Railcard can buy you a discounted weekend Travelcard for London too, although it needs a workaround which I only found out by accident recently.

You can’t just buy the Travelcard straightaway, instead you need to search for a day return ticket between two London stations. This is what LNER offers for London Waterloo – Hampton Court with a Network Railcard:

As you can see, there’s a £10 Day Travelcard option which is valid for Zone 1-6. For comparison the regular price is £15.2, and Oyster daily cap is £14.9. Note that you must collect your paper ticket at a train station, as there’s no facility to do that in a tube station. The ticket is valid for tube / bus travels within Zone 6 and you don’t have to commence your travel at the station you selected.

A Network Railcard usually costs £30, but there are always some sales going on. Trip.com tends to offer it for less than £20, although do check the restrictions as you may need to buy a train ticket to activate the railcard.