Rail travellers from York can enjoy bargain basement prices on a second major route as passengers flock to buy cheap trips to London.

Virgin has slashed the price of some tickets on routes including the CrossCountry service from York to Birmingham, Bristol and Plymouth.

The development came within hours of GNER's announcement yesterday that passengers can travel from York to London for a fiver, with a return ticket costing £10.

A spokesman said 20,000 tickets were sold in the first eight hours, before a TV advertising campaign was launched last night.

The company took an extra 100 staff on at a telesales centre to deal with some of the extra calls, but there were still some queues at peak periods.

A million of Virgin's cheapest tickets are being cut for journeys from April 6 until May 19.

The entire Virgin Value range will be reduced by around one third.

A £30 return ticket for someone travelling from York to Bristol, and booking 14 days in advance, would come down to £20, or £13.20 for those with a Railcard, while York to Plymouth would be reduced from £40 to £26.50 (£17.50 with a Railcard).

York to Birmingham, another heavily used route, falls from £12 to £8 (£5.30).

Mark Furlong, Executive Commercial Director for Virgin Trains, said today: "Following the success of our recent half-price offer when passenger levels on Virgin Trains were restored to pre-Hatfield levels we feel it's right to continue the momentum by running another very attractive promotion.

"With the train service getting back to normal, I'm sure many customers particularly those with Railcards will want to take advantage of these ridiculously cheap fares."

The cut-price tickets can be purchased in person from stations and travel agents, from the Internet on virgin.com/trains or by telephoning 08457 222 333.

Updated: 08:45 Tuesday, April 03, 2001