This man has found a way to travel by train for free… with one small catch

Getting something for free is one of life’s little joys. Food samples in a supermarket, tiny packets of perfume attached to a magazine, shampoo from a hotel. But writer Ed Wise, 29, has discovered perhaps the greatest free thing of all – train travel, albeit with one very time-consuming caveat.  

The Scot has found, thanks to a national scheme called ‘delay repay’, if you get on a train which arrives at its destination more than an hour late, you are entitled to a full refund. 

Living in London, Wise originally comes from Dumfries and makes the eye-wateringly expensive journey home around six times a year. Even including the discount of his 26-30 railcard, it costs around £100 per journey. Then, in 2022, he discovered he could get all his money returned – but only if he was willing to put in some extra hours. 

Wise says: “My sister had just had a baby and I had to go up from London all the way to Scotland. To do that, I had to take the Avanti West Coast train – it ended up being delayed for more than three hours.

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“The train manager was incredibly apologetic and so kept coming on the intercom to apologise.

“At one point, the train was stopped for over an hour and every 20 minutes or so he’d come on and say ‘I’m so bloody sorry, this is absolutely terrible.’

“Then, towards the end, he said, ‘I want you all to promise me that when you get back home you’ll get all the money back’ – he gave a really detailed explanation of how you do it. 

“Then, on my way home, my train was delayed too – so I got all my money back for that as well.”

The delay repay scheme is national – all rail operators up and down Britain offer these refunds, and this knowledge gave Wise a taste of what he could get for his time. So he began devising a rubric to figure out which trains would be delayed. 

His original journey was impacted by strikes, which are scheduled in advance. So, he started booking his trips to coincide with them. But in 2023 the intensive strike action ceased. Thankfully, he had already figured out another factor which makes train delays more likely.

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Wise says: “I had booked that particular train because I knew there was RMT strike action scheduled, but the clincher was repairs going on just outside Preston. 

“That was when I worked out the second part of the holy triad – engineering works. 

“Train companies are transparent about when they have planned works, you can track them in real time on Network Rail. The ball is in your court as a consumer, the power is in your hands, as long as you are forensic enough to analyse the information.”

Wise found the final factor which would help him save more than £1,000 on trips home during one snowy festive season. “The third part is extreme weather – when I was going back for Christmas, there was flooding on the line.”

He adds: “Because I travel north to Scotland, the chances of there being bad weather in the winter are high – that Christmas, I was more than two hours delayed, which was a good present to myself.”

There is, of course, a catch. “You do have to be willing to go through the arduous pain of a 10-hour journey that’s supposed to be five [his worst delay].”

And this length of time stuck in a confined space can make people act in strange and unexpected ways. During the aforementioned worst delay Wise eavesdropped on a conversation between a motley crew of hungry passengers. 

He says: “There were some people sitting near me who were intensely plotting to raid the train’s food car. 

“The train was delayed coming from Glasgow to London and the food carriage was shut because there was a shortage of staff – there was food in there, but no one to serve it. 

“We were stuck on this train, which had been delayed two or three hours by this time with no food.

“There was this big, stoical farmer, who sort of just nodded gruffly at everything, there was a sort of hippy single mum who was quite feisty and cool and they were plotting with some other passengers to do this heist. 

“Just as they were going over the plan for the final time, the train lurched forward, and it was like everyone was jolted out of their haze and realised they were about to commit a robbery, and they all started laughing.”

The system is not perfect and Wise does not get refunded for every journey he takes, but it is accurate enough that he is able to evangelise to friends about his method. 

Wise’s best friend Joe Manktelow-Pimm, 28, has followed in his tracks and now chooses trains likely to be delayed.

Manktelow-Pimm regularly travels between Bristol and London, but unlike Ed’s five-hour journeys, his are not usually held up by more than an hour, but he says that does not matter. 

Train companies are obliged to give their customers a discount of 25% if it is delayed by 15 minutes, 50% for 30 minutes and the golden 100% for more than an hour of hold-ups. 

All passengers need to do is apply for their money back online. 

Manktelow-Pimm says: “When I’m trying to go to Temple Meads in Bristol from Paddington, there is usually one out of every four that seems likely to be delayed, so I just hang around and make sure I’m on that one.

“I’m a little less manic about planning to get a delayed train, but I do still manage to save 15 or 20 quid – but Ed is the one with the more impressive numbers!” 

Do they feel guilty about all this free travel? No. Not a bit. 

Wise says: “I think the train companies should feel guilty for making millions of pounds while providing the worst train service in Europe – the onus is on them, not me.”

Delay repay

This is a scheme run by National Rail which allows all train customers to claim compensation for late or cancelled journeys – not all train companies use this scheme, but most do. According to the most recent data from the Office for Rail and Road, between 5 January and 31 March this year 1.7 million claims were closed by operators. 

Not all of these claims are approved, but the c2c – which runs between London and south Essex – accepted the most, with 87.4% of claimants receiving compensation.  

At the bottom of the table, only 37.2% of Elizabeth Line delay claims were paid.

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