GWR are trialling Evening Day Returns on journeys between two stations in the area bounded by Okehampton, Barnstaple, Exmouth, Newton Abbot, Paignton and Exeter St Davids/Exeter Central. The trial runs from 31st May - 12th December 2026.

These Evening Day Returns are valid on journeys arriving after 1800, with return the same day.

Usual Railcard discounts apply. Valid on all operators. Break of journey allowed.

An example fare:

Exeter St Davids - Barnstaple £8.60, saving £2.10 over the Off Peak Day Return.

 
Devon did of course have an evening ticket until 2018, as did Oxford:

https://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=20804.0

 
The are efforts afoot to try & get them to reinstate the Oxford ticket too....

 
I'm raising a glass to the... glasses we raised on a train, travelling on what might have been the UK's best value rover ticket at the time... it was called something like the 'Cambrian Coast evening day ranger', covered Aberystwyth to Pwllheli, valid after... it was either 5:30 pm or six, and cost either sixty pence or seventy-five. (This was ~1979, mind...).

Four of these tickets enabled a sunny summer evening run from Aber as far as Morfa Mawddach, for four, on a (pleasantly) fragrant and characterful series of diesel trains with a view out of the front - and a brief pause in the evening light at the former junction station while the train that had taken us there crossed the river and freed up the southbound service to collect us.

Mark

 
We have the railways to thank for the introduction of a "universal" common time across Britain - but we now seem to be going backwards again.

GWR is introducing an "evening" ticket which starts at 1800.............but SWR already have  an "evening" ticket which starts at 1200.  Perhaps the new fangled Great British Railways will be able to agree to a common nationwide time at which the "evening" is deemed to start !

 


An online look tells us:

Logic, then, is for evening tickets to be available for journeys completed less than 120 minutes before sunset, which is a defined, published, respected time for every place across the UK and is updated thoroughly in multiple places. since "time to go to bed" is typically when you get home, the return should be through to end of service, and perhaps extended to the first service in the morning.

 

I doubt anyone would say their evening out starts at 12:00. It must be more like the earliest start needed for an evening out - most likely in London, for SWR. It took me a while to twig I could use one of these for a Lunch and afternoon trip to Reading. Obviously for longer journeys it will be more limited to a proper evening out - but then they are not sold for beyond Basingstoke (and not all get super off-peak either)!