DOES Hugh Bayley, MP, have his own private train to get him and his wife to and from London (The rail issues, Letters, March 25) or does he get special rates on National Express East Coast (NXEC)?

As a frequent traveller to London (or I was before NXEC started to price itself out of the market) I’ve never been able to find such cheap fares.

Within the past couple of days I’ve received promotional emails from both NXEC and thetrainline.com, both advertising special fares to London.

I decided to check these fares for the Easter weekend, I found I could not travel on Good Friday or Easter Monday at the cheap fares, and the best I could do was the 06:00 from York on the Saturday returning on the 22:10 from King’s Cross on the Sunday.

What they don’t tell you is that the 22:10 does not go to York – it goes to Leeds. From Leeds you have to catch a bus which gets you to York at just after 2.30am.

The fares with thetrainline.com were £18.50 on the 06:00 and the return fare on the 22:10 (which I assume includes the bus fare from Leeds) was £12.50. The same fares on the same trains on the NXEC website were £22.25 and £11.15. I then checked with National Rail’s website to find the cheapest fares were £25 and £12.50.

Two other things which I’ve noticed with NXEC. Firstly, its website information about on-train catering (now much reduced) has something called the Italian Breakfast which is listed three times and at three different prices (£10.50, £12.99 and £14.99) even though the ingredients are exactly the same.

Secondly, from the end of July passengers (sorry – customers) travelling between Leeds and London will be able to either have their tickets sent to their mobile phones, or be able to print them off their computer using “plain white A4 paper”.

This begs the question of how to get through the ticket barriers at Leeds station (which I’m told are still not working properly).

So if the majority of people use mobile ticketing, or self-print ticketing, what’s the point of installing ticket barriers?

Actually, what’s the point of installing ticket barriers at all?

Dr John Ridgeway-Wood
Darnborough Street, York.