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Surprising ticket pricing

Started by Matt, June 06, 2015, 08:37:58 PM

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Tony

One trick not many people realise is if you are heading south west from Birmingham, tickets from Bromsgrove to Cheltenham are valid via Birmingham (specifically mentioned in the routing guide despite breaking the doubling back rule) and have more generous restrictions on off peak tickets than those from Birmingham as well as being cheaper, so a Bromsgrove-Cheltenham ticket at the start of splits heading to Bristol and beyond can save quite large amounts

Roy

Cheltenham is a good splitting point for Advance Saver Tickets.  For instance, with a railcard, Birmingham New Street to Plymouth is £23.05 each way.  Separate tickets from Birmingham New Street to Cheltenham and Cheltenham to Plymouth is a total of £18.35 each way - a saving of £9.40 on a return journey. 

If you buy your ticket on the CrossCountry website, you can also select your own seat.  What I do is find a seat that is available for the complete journey by booking and cancelling a Birmingham to Plymouth ticket, then book my two tickets selecting that seat. 

One ticket available from Plymouth into Cornwall (which may not work out the cheapest) is a Ride Cornwall ticket which costs £8.30 with a railcard and allows unlimited bus and train travel for the day.

barry619

#17
Quote from: Tony on June 06, 2015, 08:43:12 PM
Arriva Cross Country are the biggest rip off merchants going and on popular days don't even offer the cheap tickets. I would be very surprised if you got those prices very often, if at all
Isn't this the truth. I would also add that XC is the worst rail company out there by some margin.

I regularly do an XC journey which, if booked as one trip, offers only a £58.30 anytime single. Book it as two separate legs and advances miraculously become available and it can be done for as little as £20 even when booked just a week or so beforehand.

Apart from the HSTs their trains are awful too, and that's before you come to the idiotic use of two carriages from Birmingham to Stansted at busy times. They must think that people actually want to stand up.

the trainbasher

The standstead situation is down to central trains...basically it interworks with the Leicester stoppers


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Kevin

Quote from: the trainbasher on June 21, 2015, 02:10:54 PM
The standstead situation is down to central trains...basically it interworks with the Leicester stoppers

Which are also too small for what they carry. As with Cardiff services, as with Bournemouth services, as with nearly every XC train I've caught that's full and standing room only
Now in exile in Oxfordshire....
 

Stuharris 6360

Quote from: the trainbasher on June 21, 2015, 02:10:54 PM
The stansted situation is down to central trains...basically it interworks with the Leicester stoppers

@the trainbasher  I would hardly still blame Central Trains, how long have Cross Country been operating the route.

Have they invested in any new carriages, no, just use the ones they inherited, plus they have had plenty of time to amend the timetable so that it doesn't interwork with the Leicester stoppers.

Isn't it a case of Cross Country trying to make the most money with limited or no investment.
Pensnett is my local garage. Favourite bus of all time is Fleetline 6360 (KON 360P).

Trident 4194

Quote from: Kevin on June 21, 2015, 09:27:41 PM
Which are also too small for what they carry. As with Cardiff services, as with Bournemouth services, as with nearly every XC train I've caught that's full and standing room only


Agreed you can never find a seat on their services, especially brum to Bournemouth which are always crammed. Also their trains are old, with voyagers being ex Virgin

barry619

Quote from: Kevin on June 21, 2015, 09:27:41 PM
Which are also too small for what they carry. As with Cardiff services, as with Bournemouth services, as with nearly every XC train I've caught that's full and standing room only
I saw a Voyager leaving New Street bound for Newcastle only a few weeks ago which had left a substantial number of people behind, and have witnessed the same on a two-car to Stansted also.

While XC can only work with what they're allowed to, the whole franchise is a shambolic, badly-organised mess. The regular cancellation of hourly services 'because a staff member is unavailable' is wearing very thin as well.

T840MAK

You're complaining about 170s operating the Birmingham - Leicester - Stansted line - so where are you going to get the three car units from? The Cardiff - Birmingham - Derby - Nottingham route is ridiculously busy as well even with a three car unit!

The biggest downfall with the XC franchise was undertaken in Virgin days where the HSTs were replaced by Voyagers halving capacity on their entire network.

If you want more carriages then pay more for the train service and then the DfT will put more funding to XC for new carriages - except you've got to remember that the operation doesn't serve London so it doesn't matter what happens with it.
Twitter @TomCousins60054
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Tony

Quote from: T840MAK on June 26, 2015, 02:24:46 PM
You're complaining about 170s operating the Birmingham - Leicester - Stansted line - so where are you going to get the three car units from? The Cardiff - Birmingham - Derby - Nottingham route is ridiculously busy as well even with a three car unit!

The biggest downfall with the XC franchise was undertaken in Virgin days where the HSTs were replaced by Voyagers halving capacity on their entire network.

If you want more carriages then pay more for the train service and then the DfT will put more funding to XC for new carriages - except you've got to remember that the operation doesn't serve London so it doesn't matter what happens with it.

Virgin didn't half the capacity because the doubled the frequency of all routes, so they replaced a 6-car hauled set or 7-car HST with 8, 9 or 10 cars of Voyager, much that I would have preferred the HSTs to remain, you cannot blame Voyagers for a reduction in capacity, all they did, along with the improved timetable was attract too many people to match the extra capacity they provided

barry619

Quote from: T840MAK on June 26, 2015, 02:24:46 PM
You're complaining about 170s operating the Birmingham - Leicester - Stansted line - so where are you going to get the three car units from? The Cardiff - Birmingham - Derby - Nottingham route is ridiculously busy as well even with a three car unit!
In comes the angry know-it-all again.

I am not complaining about 170s on the Birmingham to Stansteds. I'm complaining about the two-car 170s they regularly use there to suit operational convenience, rather than meeting passenger demand.

It is not acceptable to expect people to stand throughout a journey which is this long.

T840MAK

Quote from: barry619 on June 27, 2015, 10:44:39 AM
In comes the angry know-it-all again.

I am not complaining about 170s on the Birmingham to Stansteds. I'm complaining about the two-car 170s they regularly use there to suit operational convenience, rather than meeting passenger demand.

It is not acceptable to expect people to stand throughout a journey which is this long.

I'm not sure where you've got me being an angry know-it-all from considering I've made very few posts on this forum and you don't even know me.

I'm simply saying that CrossCountry are better off with a fleet of 3 car 170s for all their class 170 routes - if you've got a problem with the capacity on the Stansted route then by all means bring it up with CrossCountry, however just remember that they have 16 3-car units, which spend the majority of their time on the longer Cardiff - Nottingham route. I've never had any capacity problems in the few times that I've used the Birmingham - Leicester / Stansted services - mind you, I've never dropped a 2-car on there either as all times I've done that it has been a three car unit.
Twitter @TomCousins60054
Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/modeltrains33/

T840MAK

Quote from: Tony on June 26, 2015, 03:36:05 PM
Virgin didn't half the capacity because the doubled the frequency of all routes, so they replaced a 6-car hauled set or 7-car HST with 8, 9 or 10 cars of Voyager, much that I would have preferred the HSTs to remain, you cannot blame Voyagers for a reduction in capacity, all they did, along with the improved timetable was attract too many people to match the extra capacity they provided

Thanks for this Tony - I can't actually remember how VTXC ran with the HSTs - maybe I'm too young to remember it, however I'm just going off what I've been told by other people, so it is refreshing to know how the services actually ran.
Twitter @TomCousins60054
Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/modeltrains33/

Tony

I found another Cross Country rip-off today.

I needed a ticket from Kiveton Park to Tamworth.

Any time single is £39.90 for a not Birmingham routed ticket, now I am not sure why you would need to go via Birmingham as the two routes are either Kiveton Park-Sheffield-Tamworth, or the more interesting Kiveton Park-Worksop-Nottingham-Tamworth.

The only off-peak single is valid via Birmingham making it more expensive than the anytime ticket to make sure no-one buys one!

Cheese

Quote from: Tony on March 25, 2021, 05:39:29 PM
I found another Cross Country rip-off today.

I needed a ticket from Kiveton Park to Tamworth.

Any time single is £39.90 for a not Birmingham routed ticket, now I am not sure why you would need to go via Birmingham as the two routes are either Kiveton Park-Sheffield-Tamworth, or the more interesting Kiveton Park-Worksop-Nottingham-Tamworth.

The only off-peak single is valid via Birmingham making it more expensive than the anytime ticket to make sure no-one buys one!

There are various ones or used to be on that line, to do a day return from Birmingham to Sheffield which I used to do regularly, other than splitting at Derby the cheapest way to do it was a Day Return from Birmingham to Saxilby which was valid via Sheffield or Nottingham and you could get a Day Return whereas it was only a Saver Return on XC.  Haven't done the trip now for a long time so don't know if that still works out or not.

I recall years ago needing to go from Doncaster to Kiveton Park, the fare was priced via Northern so was cheap being within SYPTE but the ticket also was valid via Retford it seemed so went via GNER instead of a long journey on a Pacer...

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