The Gold Card Trick - Save 1/3 on Rail Fares

today my journey has started at usefulness of rainy day by the way so the rain jacket is on and when you talk about saving money and saving tickets prices then you want to talk about rail cards and one of the greatest tricks that you can do on the national rail network is to have a gold card which gives you a third off now I don't have a gold card me but you've got a two together rail car denied me personally I've got a network rail card but I've come to meet this man here say hi Alex hello hi you do have a gold card I don't have many years you've got you've got a very special gold card so I've come to meet you at Litchfield Trent Valley if I have nearly the cheapest point-to-point season anywhere in the Southeast of England and when I say South East of England I include Staffordshire we have so many things to discuss like like why is Stafford cheer considered the south these England so we're going to take a train one stop to Litchfield City yeah and on the way we'll try and figure out what the heck is going on with your gold card Alex in case you don't remember we met on all the stations at chests on the street and because he has a company called Chester the track and a website national rail calm we can buy tickets and because he's like a ticketing expert would you classify yourself at the ticketing expert guru he said to me we should really make a video about gold cards so we're gonna go one stop from that field Trent Valley to liberal City and they're gonna tie next and then later we're gonna go between Lapworth and Hutton not that the timing has got anything to do with it because it's more to do with the price as you'll see but just for fun we thought we Tyler we're about to leave in a minute I've got my phone I'm gonna turn it is it just girly just like a minute or two they're quite close all right and then we'll chat when we get to Litchfield city we jump out and go gravity as well that's good [Music] [Music] we've change trains we're just waiting for a fast train down into Birmingham from Litchfield city it took three and a half minutes to get here and you used your gold card for the first time even though you live in County Durham yes and not Litchfield yes that little bit of paper that said Litchfield tremble is literal city the first timers have of Internet and you've done it purely because it's one of the cheapest gold cards you can buy and then they give you benefits on the rest of the network yes so what benefits does a gold copper a gold car gets benefits to all people who are commuting regularly and other than the south east or even as far north of staff here on the West Midlands Trains Network the advantage is you get 1/3 off your own travel yes and I would put 1/3 of your journey as well off of it off peak travel that's right I'll get travel yeah and then I can take another two people on top of that and I'm two for children and a reduced rate too so even though you don't do this commute you buy an annual ticket known as a gold car to get just 164 pounds for the entire year and you calculated that the savings you make over the year are worth 160 pounds outlay that you've paid for that ticket so we think that the three cheapest places in Britain to do this between what you've got which is lit field Trent Valley little city between Hatton and Lapworth that we're heading now just just just for just for the fun of it and also between the right Esplanade and ride Pierhead on the island white not the pao2 risk over the pier heads and the fares are higher the the journey your thing he said he's sent Jon's rodents and John's Road and it's client okay right and we think that South West Trains Railway might be some additional concession they do they do so tiny really so many people want that it's genuinely worth you pay there's 164 pounds and you make that money back over the year through the other discounts at the gold card but if it brings you well that's that's a brilliant that's a brilliant tailing is it not yet [Music] there it is with my photo card so you have to have like any season ticket you have to have a protocol Ilyas and in the gold card is issued in conjunction to the number there is the same as the number there yeah and then as you see it's for the year 164 pounds [Music] right new Street got to walk to more Street I always get lost here not always but it is confusing [Music] so we went to Mort Street luck Norfolk station we're on the 1535 children train to lemming ttyn and it stops at both Lapworth Manhattan what I kind of forgotten I kind of knew but Lapworth Manhattan gets a really irregular service like every every two hours or so and we want to at least get out at either Lapworth or Hatton when we could just pass through we want to just go and actually see what's out what's that happening but this doesn't mean that we are concerning ourselves to getting out a bit of a nowhere station in the middle of nowhere but that's always fun right so we're heading for Hatton and then we're gonna double back I think maybe via dorage Reger than that worth it it'll all make sense when we get there it's a right Lapworth we're not getting out on either way but just on the way down we are stopping here I just wanted to at least peer out and look at that work one person that off one person it's a bit of a nothing station and in the rain more busier busier than that worth about doing at least you station mainly cuz I can see there's a permit to travel machine over there yeah it's hasn't everything you you mention station with three platforms one to go off to the left yeah strap for enabling the others of the mainline to put it suburbia it does it does fill out though when I do at least few station I should get a shot of like the onward travel board and the timetable just to show how sparse it is and there's a litter bin and stuff we need to say but so literal Trent manatee literal city was three-and-a-half minutes or much less just now Lapworth to Hatton was about six minutes yeah amazing that's the cheapest point-to-point because there are loads of other stations for example probably north to sundries parking in southeastern but where you version yeah that's what one unit to the other but I'll tell you what this clearly no ticket office here no do you want to see I don't think there was a ticket office at that worth yeah so there's a net you can't actually go to the ticket offices at Lapworth or Hatton to buy a gold card because there isn't one yeah and I suspect I may be wrong about this no knowing but I suspect that there are no commuters at all who genuinely travel this gold cart thing it worked the gold card area it's sort of tidy and there's a hangover from the days of Network Southeast because there's a network rail card but the thing about a network rail card which is only valid in London and the south east to hang over the network southeast yeah is that there's a 13 pound minimum fare Monday to Friday but not on a weekend and you don't get the TfL discount gold card there's got no minimum fare that's correct and you can use it this is the brilliant part to get a third off hoist Affairs and the area has extended slightly so it extends slightly up in the northern area so it goes beyond Ipswich is you're gonna pretty like Roma I could do all that her Lowestoft and Ipswich and why was it that Birmingham suddenly because it hasn't a lakh worth wasn't in the Gold Cup it wasn't originally and I think the reason it joined was because the people who were rowing the franchise at the time few years ago wanted to have a similar scheme to London who was the French I hope the problem in London okay so I was under minute said we want to we want to dismal include this and cuz rather than inventing an entirely new scheme it was easier to extend the existing scheme to include the West Midlands which has the advantage then the commuters into an hour of London than anywhere else in the Home Counties can now travel to the West Midlands as well people will now be leaving comments saying why isn't this why isn't the Gold Cup thing nationwide why is it only the southeast so that's that's another question charlie I mean the the gold car was originally invention of Chris green when he was the managing director oh yeah to give some benefit to people who did something pretty horrible having to get on a train five days a week and the last thing they really wanted to do on the Madeo sort of sixth or seventh day was ride on their their route so why don't give the opportunity to go in the other direction somewhere else or go on a complete different line somewhere else it was in the spur died ragged at a discount discounted rates right okay okay so that's where it came from he got another train oh it's the Loco what we're talking about cut so click in the corner here there's no other stations video we discuss all the route cards and there's a link as well to my route cards comparison guide because some rail cars are valid at all times some are valid at 90 area valid at 9:30 a.m. and 7 handed at 10:00 a.m. unless there's they're all they're all slightly different here the and your gold card is always 9:30 it used to be 10 o'clock but it's now we're going through that change well that's to the gust birds the customers benefit of good yeah 9:30 yeah it's the start of the off-peak period as far as using yeah and a gold card is concerned it's fair to say that route cards are a complicated affair but kind of fun to try an get your head around and if you can possibly get one then get a rare card what do we do that for half an hour in the rain like you think of only one thing to do and I'm not sure it's be a good thing well though to what we can see here lookey yeah you sit there on that little bit oh if you're qualified you're gonna say canal we could go in there real good around Union canals here than anybody with a houseboat you might let us send them over there to make a cup of tea [Applause] so I'm back at Marley bound Alex's bye he had to go he had to go to his evening appointment it's left for me here to sum up musically over my shoulder back there is a network South East logo ties in earlier with what we were saying about the network card and then it looks out these logo which I used all these things exist because of you know well-meaning but outdated regulations and rail fares which have been in place for many years and it might change it will change we know it will change the RDG the rail deliver Group Center a passenger consultation to thousands and thousands of thousands of people back this summer and they got back their answers about how ticketing should be done in the future I'll put a link in the description they're gonna take that the results of all those surveys to the government this autumn right about now October November and it will change I don't think the gold card trick will be here forever maybe the network card will go or change while you can kids ticketing in the future is changing [Music]

Channel: Geoff Marshall

Views: 168,818

Rating: 4.8956914 out of 5

Keywords: save money, saving money, cheap fares, cheaper rail fares, gold card trick, gold card save one third, railcards, tfl saving, oyster saving, lichfield trent valley, lichfield city, hatton, lapworth, national rail

Id: DbrFze0XH5M

Length: 12min 32sec (752 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 23 2018