Advance ticket

[dcd]

I have an advance ticket with the following itinerary
Depart:
Winchester dep. 08:48
Change at:
Clapham Junction arr. 09:43
dep. 09:54
London Victoria arr. 10:01
London Underground
London Euston dep. 10:40
Crewe arr. 12:10
dep. 12:32
Arrive:
Liverpool Lime Street , 13:10
Changes: 4 Duration: 4h 22m

Any ideas why it wants me to change at Clapham Junction and go to Victoria and catch the underground from there, rather than stay on the train to Waterloo and use the underground from there?

 

[Deerfold]

I have an advance ticket with the following itinerary
Depart:
Winchester dep. 08:48
Change at:
Clapham Junction arr. 09:43
dep. 09:54
London Victoria arr. 10:01
London Underground
London Euston dep. 10:40
Crewe arr. 12:10
dep. 12:32
Arrive:
Liverpool Lime Street , 13:10
Changes: 4 Duration: 4h 22m

Any ideas why it wants me to change at Clapham Junction and go to Victoria and catch the underground from there, rather than stay on the train to Waterloo and use the underground from there?

Without knowing the date you're travelling it's difficult to know if there's engineering work on the line to Waterloo or the Northern line.

 

[razor89]

I put your journey into FJP dated tomorrow and I get the same result, the system tries to find the fastest route, not the most sensible one. I had to select 'allow overtaken trains' to get it to give me the journey via Waterloo instead of Victoria. It gives underground journey times as 9 minutes for Victoria-Euston and 20 mins for Waterloo-Euston so I suspect it thinks you will get to Euston faster by going via Victoria.

EDIT: Doing it this way actually puts on on the 10:43 from Euston, changing at Crewe and into Liverpool Lime Street at 14:10, an hour later than your original journey.

I suspect then that the route via Victoria is faster and is the only way to meet the minimum connection time for the 10:40 from Euston.

 

[dcd]

Thanks for the replies. I will definitely go via Victoria, might see my last 465 unit.

 

[Paul Kelly]

This has been discussed a few times. Here's an example: http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=82077

What it comes down to is: the Underground transfer from Victoria to Euston is timed at 11 minutes shorter than from Waterloo to Euston. The train journey from Clapham Junction to Victoria is timed at 2 minutes shorter than the journey from Clapham Junction to Waterloo.

So you have a differential there of 13 minutes. Clapham Junction has a minimum connection time of 10 minutes, which reduces the differential to just 3 minutes. And in fact your suggested train (the 0954 from CLJ to VIC) is an 11 minute connection, so there is only a 2 minute differential between the Waterloo and Victoria routes. But the journey planners think Victoria is quicker!

The problem is exacerbated because you're coming into Waterloo on a long-distance train which has a couple of minutes' padding added to its arrival time at Waterloo, whereas you're changing onto a local train which doesn't have any such "working timetable differential" in its arrival time at Victoria.

So if the timetable padding wasn't there, or the Waterloo to Euston transfer time was reduced a tiny bit, the problem would go away.

As I said, this has been mentioned a few times. It's a pity people like Andrew Head from ATOC who trawl this forum looking for fares anomalies don't also take action to fix silly timetable anomalies such as this!