So £41.55 without a railcard. And you have to travel at off-peak times. I live in Edinburgh and regularly commute to Manchester. Now that diesel is cheaper, if I stick to under 65mph on the motorway I can do this for less than £40 of fuel. And I can carry more stuff and some passengers! Makes the train seem less amazing now doesn't it. The other month I got a train from Vienna to Salzburg, from a private company (non-state rail), ~295km for 25EUR. Bought on the train, no advance booking. And there was free and fast WiFi, it was mega quick and really clean. The UK system is a rolling laughing stock (pun intended). Not voting either way, but this should be standard with your ticket and not stuffed with adverts/data mining.

If you have a journey booked through Virgin and haven't been sent a code then contact them on twitter or phone: https://twitter.com/Virgin_TrainsEC/status/739839860622647296

I booked last month and got two codes by phoning up and giving my booking reference.

I would never pay for wi-fi on a train. When I've tried it (they sometimes give you so many minutes free) it is so painfully slow and often drops signal anyway.

You can get decent free wi-fi on many buses these days so why not trains?

This. You're only getting me on public transport if it's cheaper and almost as convenient as driving. There are rare occasions when long distance advance train journeys are cheaper than driving and I'll use them, but these occasions are rare.

east coast tickets are a rip off, wifi should be free for all anyway.

West coast trains are cheap £41 for travel tomorrow to London from Preston. East coast prices are eye gorging - cheapest Darlington to London is £70

I love Virgin.
Clean, reliable services.
Their advance tickets are amazingly cheap.
Just booked Manchester to Edinburgh return for the Edinburgh festival. £27.70 with my rail card. An utter bargain.
Advance tickets are so cheap I often go day return from Manchester to London on a Sunday for a theatre show.

its not free.. you pay over priced fares in order to keep that sham service going..its the very least they can do..given collectively train companies get a 4bn subsidy from the government.. btw that's ur hard earned money also...

No thanks.. it costs me probably 3-4x less to drive with car than use them..that's Driving only me alone in the car!

In todays Guardian Virgin Trains to introduce free film and TV streaming app
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/06/virgin-trains-free-film-tv-streaming-app-netflix

Maybe everything should be free nowadays. Or maybe not if you care about the quality of what you're getting.

Last time I tried to use Wi-Fi between Newcastle and Edinburgh it was slower than dial up.

Lots of places do. It's not "meant to be a free service" you pay for it as an overhead in the product/service you are buying.

cold for me. meant to be a free service.
who charges for WiFi nowadays? wait a sec......
virgin. ❄

Doesn't really make up for the massive hike in advance fares since Virgin took over.

With the amount of data mining that goes on with these access points, you'd think they'd be happy to offer it for free to all customers.

Brilliant- thank you!

remember in order to receive a code you need to opt in for marketing material / e-mails

Now they 'BEAM' entertainment to your device free.