Students trying to buy cheap train tickets face confusion over the best the way to save money.

The introduction of advanced fares, peak and off peak travel options have made finding the best prices for travel much more difficult.

If you want to save yourself a bit of money, simply going to the station and telling the attendant where you want to go is no longer the way to do this.

Commuters should look at advanced tickets, find out if buying two singles is in fact cheaper than buying a return, and journey splitting, all of which can sometimes save them money.

A quick search on the internet showed that an adult travelling with a 16-25 railcard could save £16.50 on a journey from Preston to Glasgow by buying their ticket a few weeks in advance.

It isn’t quite that simple though. Advance purchase return tickets don’t seem to exist, so you have to buy two advance singles, which can only be used on specific trains. Miss that train and your ticket becomes useless.

The cheap advance purchase tickets are a brilliant option for commuters - if you can find them. For some journeys, such as Preston to Bristol, these tickets seem to be non-existent.

By travelling at off peak-times, commuters can save themselves up to £25 on a standard return fare. For those who don’t travel regularly this could quite easily cause more confusion. When is off-peak?

Off-peak travel is after 9.30 in the morning, before 3.30 and after 7.15 in the evening and at weekends. If this isn’t enough confusion, there’s the option of splitting your journey in two to save money.

Buying two tickets for a journey, for example buying tickets for Preston to Carlisle and Carlisle to Glasgow rather than just Preston to Glasgow can sometimes be cheaper. This again is something you have to look into though.

Unfortunately, train companies who up ticket prices and don’t sell advance tickets for more popular journeys aren’t doing anything they shouldn’t be.

Competition laws mean that they can justify the higher prices if a service is particularly popular as of the cost of running more trains and because it helps to cover the costs of the lesser used services.

So, unfortunately, if you live somewhere in the country where you have to use a popular service, you will just have to put up with higher prices for your tickets.

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