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Home / Media / Press Releases / Press Releases 2006 / Stagecoach expands megatrain budget rail service

03/04/2006

• New routes from London Waterloo to Bournemouth and Weymouth
• Bristol, Bath, Exeter, Yeovil and Salisbury also added to network
• More £1 rail fares as megatrain capacity grows to 5,000 seats a week

Stagecoach Group’s innovative budget rail service, megatrain.com, is being extended to new locations in the south and west of England.

megatrain.com, which is being piloted at South West Trains, the UK’s biggest rail franchise, offers passengers tickets for as little as £1.

The cheapest tickets on the UK rail network for decades will now be available on services linking London with Bournemouth, Weymouth, Exeter, Salisbury, Yeovil, Bath and Bristol.

Bookings for the new megatrain services are being accepted now for travel from 20 April for Bournemouth and Weymouth and from 28 April for the other new destinations. More than 1,700 seats a week will be available on the new routes.

Ian Dobbs, Chief Executive of Stagecoach Group’s rail division, said: “We are delighted at the response of passengers to megatrain.com and these new routes will bring cheaper fares to thousands more people in the south and west of England.

“The success of our initial pilot routes has demonstrated that we can attract new passengers to the railways and help make the most of the capacity on the rail network using flexible, value-for-money pricing. We believe there is significant potential to expand this innovative concept beyond South West Trains to other parts of the UK rail network.”

The expansion of megatrain.com follows the success of the two initial trial routes from London to Southampton and Portsmouth – launched in October last year - which have now taken more than 26,000 bookings.

Budget prices will be available on a number of off-peak services Monday to Saturday. The services include:

• London-Bournemouth – two journeys a day in each direction
• London-Weymouth – two journeys a day in each direction
• London-Exeter – three journeys a day in each direction
• London-Salisbury^ – three journeys a day in each direction
• London-Yeovil* – three journeys a day in each direction
• London-Bath – one journey Mon-Friday and two journeys on a Saturday
• London-Bristol – one journey Mon-Friday and two journeys on a Saturday

megatrain.com offers seats through a dedicated website and phone hotline, with the cheapest fares available the earlier customers book. The service has proved a huge hit with customers, with the website clocking up more than 280,000 hits in five months.

With the launch of the new destinations, megatrain.com now offers more than 5,000 seats a week to and from nine locations on the South West Trains network.

The budget rail service follows the huge success of Stagecoach’s market-leading low-cost inter-city coach service, megabus.com, which now has a national network covering 40 UK cities and carries around 2 million passengers a year.

ENDS

For further information, please contact:
Steve Stewart, Head of Media and Public Affairs, Stagecoach Group
Tel: 01738 442111 or mobile 07764 774680 or the South West Trains Press Office on 020 7620 5229

Note to Editors:

All megatrain.com reservations are subject to a 50p booking fee
Timetables for all megatrain services are available at www.megatrain.com
No megatrain.com services are available on a Sunday.
* London-Yeovil: two journeys in each direction on Fridays.
^ London-Salisbury: two journeys on Fridays.