The £31.80 train ticket for a 20 mile journey

Published on 19 August 2011 in , , ,

I’ve probably blogged about insane train tickets enough times to sound like some sort of broken record. Or absolute nutter. I’ll let you decide which. However a ticket I bought this week brought a whole new level to rail fare insanity.

The ticket was for a forty minute journey on a Southern train between Penshurst and East Croydon which I bought after just having done a 15 mile walk. My outward ticket cost £4.70 so you can imagine my surprise that the return trip’s ticket for a journey that was under 20 miles, was priced ambitiously at £31.80!

Train ticket for Penhurst to Croydon labelled £31.80, which actually cost £8

Don’t worry, it’s not train fares gone mad! The conductor who sold me the ticket actually charged me the correct fare of £8. Indeed if he even knew that his ticket machine was printing off random numbers in the price field, he didn’t comment on it. Quite where the machine got the value of £31.80 from is another matter. Even a first class ticket wouldn’t have cost that much!