Train Services

Note: Train fares are very complicated - please check details for yourself before relying on any of the suggestions on this page

Winster's nearest railway station is at Matlock, at the end of a single-track branch-line with trains every 1 or 2 hours, taking 30 mins to/from Derby. Click Here for current "departure board" information for Matlock - it doesn't pick up delays once trains have left Ambergate, but it can still be useful. You can also download a printed timetable.

Watch out for Sunday (and sometimes Saturday) engineering works - the less-than-intelligent people at Central trains time the replacement bus to take 66 minutes from Derby, and the bus arrives enormously early at each stop, then waits for ages until the allotted departure time. Towards Derby, the replacement bus leaves much earlier than the train it replaces - if travelling at a weekend, do check first - 08457 484950, or see below for online options).

A clever tip from Veronica Kemble: If you are travelling from Matlock to London/anywhere else and find yourself with a lengthy wait at Derby for your connection, if you buy an ordinary single from Matlock - Belper, and then a 1st class single from Belper - Derby (that's the cheapest 1st class single you can buy), it gives you access to the first class lounge on Derby station which has free tea and coffee, comfy chairs and TV.    Cost is about £1.50 more than a normal single.    They look at you like you're nuts when you buy the ticket, because there IS no 1st class compartment between Belper - Derby, but it's perfectly legal. Only problem is that the lounge closes at about 8 pm.

East Midlands Trains operate between London and Nottingham, Derby, Chesterfield, Sheffield and Leeds. Their "walk-up" fares are horrendously expensive, but if you can plan ahead, there are some decent deals to be had - as with other companies, the sooner you book, the less you pay. It pays to use EMTs own website or call centre (08457 125 678) rather than the market-leading Trainline website - the latter impose additional fees for using a credit card, for posting (or even collecting) tickets, and add travel insurance unless you remember to remove it - not nice people to deal with. (As an alternative, there is a new ticket service at http://www.raileasy.co.uk which some people have found to be better at finding cheap deals. But it doesn't currently work with the Firefox browser).

The nearest mainline station is at Chesterfield - the far side of town, but not too bad to reach even at busy times. The station car park has CCTV (albeit just a couple of cameras) and charges £5.50 per 24 hours . There is also onstreet parking for free in Piccadilly Road which seems reasonably safe and is within about five minutes' walk (a bit spooky really late at night, but OK otherwise). Unfortunately, tickets to London from Chesterfield are considerably more expensive than from Derby or Matlock. A Standard Class return that allows you to turn up and travel on any train costs £125 return from Chesterfield against £109 from Matlock/Derby (Feb 2007).

Tip - if you are stuck buying full-priced tickets (eg for a full working day in London), it is often cheaper to break your trip into several parts, and to buy separate tickets for each. You are allowed to do this as long as your train stops at each station where your tickets start and end. For Chesterfield-London, most trains stop at Leicester and you can save about 10% return by booking separately for Chesterfield-Leicester and Leicester-London.

If your trains in both directions stop at Leicester AND Bedford, it is even cheaper: Open Returns from Chesterfield to Leicester and Leicester to Bedford plus a Day Return Bedford to London total £85.50 or 32% cheaper. From Matlock, breaking the tickets at Bedford brings the cost of a full-day-in-London trip down to £72 - but this is likely to mean a considerably slower journey

If you really HAVE to get to London early on a weekday, and want the cheapest possible ticket, then it looks as if you might manage £61.20 for an Open Return from Matlock or Derby to Bletchley and from there a Day Return to London. But it is a long way round, and so likely to be a slow journey!

Derby has nearly all of Chesterfield's trains (and the odd extra one too) but traffic problems are much more severe and the station is at the opposite side of the city centre. All three of their Car Parks are expensive - £8 per 24 hours (even at weekends), and it's no cheaper to use City Centre car parks either (those with CCTV are even more expensive than the station).

For ease of access, it might be worth trying Long Eaton station (close to Junction 25 on the M1) where many Derby to London trains stop. For the greatest flexibility of service, Loughborough is an option - most trains on both the Derby and Nottingham lines stop there - but the car park only takes 140 cars, so may be an issue on busy days.

Train travel to Leeds during the morning peak can be a pain, with awkward gaps in the service (improvements due 2008). Chesterfield is the least-bad start point. Changing at Doncaster rather than Sheffield can result in a more comfortable journey.

For travel to York, Newcastle and Edinburgh, it is often easiest to drive to Doncaster (£9 per day parking). Newark is also a viable option - about 80 minutes' drive and a £9 per day charge, but a secure car park (space may be tight on weekdays) and very fast trains from there to London or the North on GNER.

For Manchester, there is a station at Buxton (cheap parking if you buy a train ticket), but the service (about once an hour, taking an hour) is very slow - you can usually overtake the train if you drive on to Disley (where the station is next to the A6). A bit further still is Hazel Grove station, which has many more trains, and free parking (which fills up early in the day on weekdays). For an evening in Manchester, check the special fare for an Evening Return Buxton-Manchester - valid from 1830 at just £3.40 in Feb 2007. Otherwise, a "Greater Manchester Wayfarer" ticket could be better value than ordinary tickets - ask at the station.

If you want a real travel bargain, you can travel for as little as £1.50 each way between Sheffield, Chesterfield, or Derby and London, with a Megatrain deal. As you'd expect, availability is limited to less popular trains, but if you can get organised enough to book ahead - and work within their restrictions, this can be a brilliant deal.

Rail Travel Information

The most authoratitive site for times (but not fares) is National Rail, who also offer a useful (but large - 2Mb) UK rail map in Acrobat format. You can call them on 08457 484950 (or 020 7278 5240 - less memorable, but may be cheaper, depending on your phone company). You can now consult a PDF file of the full National Rail Timetable online - but ridiculously, they publish corrections updates as a separate supplement rather than bothering to correct the original. So by all means browse the PDF files, but before relying on what you see, check with an online source to see if things have changed.

You can get train times from the National Rail Journey Planner - not perfect, but it includes some useful featuers, like the ability to find first and last trains of the day for any route.

For complicated trips, you might want to try DB (German Railways) (in English) - it allows you to choose the quickest journey between two points, and you can check on likely catering, intermediate stops etc. An interesting alternative (which even gives platform numbers) is planajourney.co.uk.

BUT beware that these "secondary" sites may not be fully up-to-date on engineering works, so once you've sorted out your preferred option, you need to check against the Trainline or National Rail in case one of your trains turns out to be a (re-timed) bus!

For Eurpoean rail tickets, DB (German railways) have a UK call centre that will sell you European train tickets, on 08702 43 53 63.

To get an idea of when cheap advance-purchase tickets will go on sale (some trains have so few cheap tickets that they sell out almost instantly) - go the ATOC website and choose "Booking Horizons" (sorry no direct link, but the page name changes each time they update the data.