A disgruntled passenger managed to claim full refunds on all of his train tickets for a year.
Ed Wise, 29, predicted train delays on Avanti West Coast meaning that every ticket he booked in 2023 was refunded.
He believes he has saved at least £1,000 in less than three years since he started planning for delays.
Avanti West Coast offers customers, 25% off for a 15 minute delay, 50% off for a 30 minute delay and a full refund for delays of an hour or more.
Wise, who writes the personal finance newsletter Bunce with colleague Joe Manktelow-Pimm, said he paid “those parasitic Avanti vampires zero” and “rode for free”.
He said he began planning for delays after returning from a holiday in Italy, where he booked equivalent journeys for much cheaper prices.
Wise said: “I was furious at how woefully inefficient and expensive UK trains were.”
Even after buying a railcard, using ticket splitting and booking trips to cheaper stations, he found he was still paying a high amount and contending with delays.
He used three main factors to predict when trains would be delayed, which were strike action, planned engineering works and extreme weather.
Strike action means operators are hit by staff shortages, and Wise found there was normally a knock-on effect of several days before and after the planned action.
Trade unions must give two weeks’ notice before planned industrial action, which Wise used as advance warning of delays.
Trains are sometimes delayed deliberately to allow engineers to work on the railway or carry out other maintenance.
These delays are published by National Rail on their website.
Extreme weather was the third element of Wise’s so-called “Train Delay Prediction Paradigm”, events which are likely to delay trains.
He said: “Combine planned engineering works and strike action with winter weather – your train will be delayed, no question about it.”
Wise also discovered official statistics showing stations which were more likely to experience delays.
According to the data, the stations with the most cancellations from April 2024 to March 2025 were Ellesmere Port and Ince and Elton, where over a fifth of scheduled trains were cancelled.
Both are operated by Northern Trains.
Wise admitted that there were some “pretty brutal all-dayers” but he used the delays to work his remote job, though this did not always work.
Once, a cancelled train meant more passengers on the service and Wise had the “unpleasant” experience of being left without a seat for two hours.
Despite this, he said it was generally a “perfect” opportunity to get some work done, adding that he treats it as “a Starbucks on Wheels”.
He said the experience was “fun” and he felt like he was “winning”.
The average delay was just over an hour on his usual five-hour journey from London to Carlisle.
Wise said: “One hour is the golden median, all your money back for minimal hassle.”
For those considering using the system, he advised using the time to get serious work done and only attempting the method for journeys of more than three hours.
He added: “Pack several sandwiches, a thermos, and a book.”
Rail fares in the UK are the highest in Europe, but roughly 40% of trains are late.
Wise said several people have reached out to him after his story was published in his newsletter to say they had taken the same approach.
