Say you’re travelling from Station A to Station C, and the train stops at Station B along the way. Instead of buying one ticket from A to C, you buy:
- A ticket from Station A to Station B
- A ticket from Station B to Station C
Your journey is identical. In most cases you stay on the same train throughout. But because of the way UK fares are structured, the two tickets combined can work out meaningfully cheaper than the single through-fare.
There is one critical requirement: the train must make a scheduled stop at the station where your tickets change. It doesn’t need to stop for long, it just needs to stop.
When you book on Choo Choo, we check this automatically. We only show you split options where the train you’re travelling on actually stops at the split station, so you never have to worry about whether a split is valid. Take my typical journey as an example: Nottingham to London. The fast train almost always stops at Kettering, and more often than not it’s cheaper to split the ticket there. Choo Choo surfaces this automatically. If the split isn’t cheaper, our journey planner won’t recommend it. You’ll simply see the best available price, split or not.
