OFF: BritRail

[K Henderson]

I said...

>>You can just turn up and get a ticket on the Gatwick Express, that's what
>>most people do.  Unless you're doing a lot of rail travel the pass might not
>>save that much.
>
>Well, I'm planning to head south to Brighton/Eastbourne for a day, then head
>over to Canterbury for another day, and then head back to London for the two
>days (Sat./Sun.).  Sounds like the $105 + $18 Gatwick might be the best
>deal, as long as I can ride all the London tubes with my 4-day pass.

OK, well, the BritRail passes are not usable on the London Underground,
though some of the 'National Rail' lines do go into some stations in London,
e.g. Victoria Station.  There's a nice multicolor map at
http://www.londonunderground.co.uk/images/lon_con.jpg that shows you how the
national rails (in white) and the LU (various colors) link up.

However, this will actually save me money, 'cause I have discovered that a
weekend LU travelcard only runs about 6 UKP (or 7 UKP, if you need to go out
as far as Zone Six, where Heathrow is).  And so I can now get just a
three-day SouthEast Brit Rail pass for $74 (saving $31 wrt the 4-day) and
then only pay about $10 eq. for the Sat-Sun LU pass.  And then (since
Gatwick is well outside Zone Six to the south) pay another 10.20 UKP (=$16?)
for the Gatwick Express (www.gatwickexpress.co.uk) to get 'home'.  These run
all night long I've discovered, every hour on the half-hour between 12:30 AM
and 4:30 AM, and then every 15 minutes during the bulk of the day
(specifically from Victoria I believe).  Anyway, $100 for transportation for
five days seems pretty reasonable...a lot easier than screwing around with a
car that's for sure.  I'm completely unfamiliar with train travel (other
than that one week in London in 1986) as I've *never* been on a train in the
US in my entire life, but I know it's the way to go over there.  What does
petrol cost, about 1 UKP per liter?  It's about three or four times cheaper
than that over here, and it's high right now!

The London tubes seem to run until about 12:30 AM, so it's a question
whether the Motorhead show would get out in time to zip over to Victoria,
esp. if you (I) needed to stop off someplace else on the way.  Plus, the
weekend pass would theoretically go dead at midnight, and not sure if they'd
grant a half-hour grace period.  With Hawkwind, if you stayed through to the
bitter end (>hours of horrible rave crap?) I guess the tubes would be up and
running again.  :)

One last site I found that might be of help to other travellers...
www.railtrack.co.uk
There you can access an interactive timetable and figure out how to go from
place to place.  But they don't give you prices...which if you have an
unlimited pass doesn't matter I suppose.

Enough logistix for now...
Grakkl (FAA)