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I can see no alternative to a standard single costing pounds 4.90 for the 15-mile journey. But it gets you safely across the border into West Yorkshire, where suddenly fares fall to near- Italian levels.A Day Ranger ticket costs pounds 4.40 and entitles up to three adults to travel anywhere in the county by train or bus (after 9.30am on weekdays, any time at weekends).This dream ticket will ease you as quickly or slowly as you like between Pontefract and Wakefield, where you have a baffling choice of fares on the fast-track GNER train to London.The range of tickets to King’s Cross is more complicated than ever it was under British Rail. At the top end, the full one-way fare is pounds 52.50; next a SuperSaver single pounds 48; an Apex single pounds 28.50. Crafty one-way travellers will instead buy a day return, price pounds 22, and throw away the inbound half.

Cheapest of all is the new evening ticket, which begins on 1 June. The “After Eight” ticket allows a single journey departing after 8pm for pounds 12 anywhere on the GNER network – which could be a journey as long as the 438 miles between Motherwell and King’s Cross.Once in London you find all kinds of special deals, such as the Thameslink offer, tomorrow only, allowing unlimited travel between Bedford and Brighton for pounds 1; to qualify, you must buy the ticket today.Returning from the capital to Birmingham allows you to benefit from the most tangible piece of competition so far. Chiltern Trains, which runs from Marylebone via Banbury to Birmingham, and Silverlink (from Euston via Northampton) are both aggressively chasing Virgin’s main line route. As a result, Richard Branson’s company is offering a silly price for a 120-mile journey even at peak times: just pounds 7, if you book a Virgin Value ticket by 6pm the day before.The best bargain of all cannot be found in England, Wales or Scotland: tomorrow, and on any other Sunday, rail travellers in Northern Ireland can roam the length and breadth of the province for just pounds 3..

If you have seen a figure scavenging furtively around station platforms and booking offices in the past few weeks, it was probably me. Trying to find out what rail deals are around is an exercise as frustrating as a stalled train. Most of the bargains here were picked up from posters and pamphlets in the stations themselves. For schedule and fare information, every train operator’s automated phone system refers you to the National Rail Enquiry number, 0345 484950.
In my experience, the chances of receiving sensible, accurate information from this source for any remotely complicated journey are minimal.The reason seems to be the way that the system is set up. Your call is diverted to one of several call centres around Britain.

Some of these are run by train operating companies, who are not always assiduous about giving helpful advice about rivals’ services. Others are run by telephone companies whose staff need not ever have been near a train.An example of how even a simple request can be mishandled: on Wednesday this week, I called to ask the time of a train from London Waterloo to Bath. The subsequent conversation went like this:”From Waterloo?”"Yes, please”"To Bath?”"Yes, please”"I’ve got nothing from Waterloo – all the trains for Bath go from Paddington.”Wales & West, which runs trains daily from Waterloo to Bath and beyond, pays thousands of pounds each year for a telephone service that diverts potential customers to its rival, Great Western Trains.The next question, to a different operator, was about a ScotRail promotion on Sundays giving a 50 per cent reduction to anyone travelling with a child I checked on a specific journey from Edinburgh to Aberdeen. That it was not going to be a productive conversation became evident almost immediately:”Aberdeen Hmmm. Is that A-B-E-R …?” Twenty minutes later, via a ScotRail operator based in Newcastle, I finally got the information I needed.No wonder motoring is so popular.. Gatwick has the best rail links of any UK airport.