help london to Ipswich via Cambridge please

[infoman]

Turned up at London Terminal for trip to Ipswich, I forgot to check for engineering work.

So train to Stansted then bus to Witham then train to Ipswich.

I could have gone London to Ipswich via Cambridge if I had checked.

Could the Liverpool Street station help desk not have suggested to travel via Cambridge?

I have tried to find out the off peak fare from London to Ipswich via Cambridge, with out succes, can help with this fare enquiry?

Thanks in advance.

 

[John @ home]

I have tried to find out the off peak fare from London to Ipswich via Cambridge,with out succes,

A Standard Off-Peak Return London Terminals - Bury St Edmunds route via Cambridge costs £41.60. If returning via Ipswich, you need to excess the return leg only to a £43.70 Standard Off-Peak Return London Terminals - Bury St Edmunds route Any Permitted. That costs half the difference, £1.05, making a total cost of £42.65.

If you use the outward leg, and the Bury St Edmunds - Ipswich part of the return leg, on the date printed on the ticket, then the return portion remains valid for a month for travel Ipswich to London Liverpool Street, hopefully at a time when the line has re-opened!

 

[306024]

Could the Liverpool Street station help desk not have suggested to travel via Cambridge?

The journey via Cambridge takes a shade over three hours, and that assumes you turn up just as the train is due to depart. It is an hourly service.

Did you ask? I don't suppose it occurred to them that someone would want to pay more and take longer when there was a half hourly service via Stansted Airport and Witham, especially as it appears the only fare involves splitting at Bury.

 

[Hadders]

Remember also that if the staff told everyone to travel via Cambridge there would be insufficient capacity to carry everyone. You'd then suggest they should run buses instead

 

[infoman]

Thank you for your replys,I think the point here is keeping passengers away from the bus's.
Also on the day the Train from Norwich to Whitam via Ipswich was cancelled
due to a train fault.
The staff at Ipswich must/should have been aware the the train from Norwich was cancelled.
In this case should the staff not have advised passengers to travel on earlier
services via Cambridge and passed their tickets accordingly?

 

[LowLevel]

The bus is intended to be used - that's why it's provided. It may not be ideal but the alternative rail services are not particularly high capacity and most likely couldn't cope with the number of passengers.

From personal experience EMT and GA services between Norwich and Ely are heavily loaded and rather unpleasant to travel on during these works (just ask the cyclists who are used to DVTs that carry lots of bikes on the Intercity services but are often refused access to consecutive trains on the other route and can't use replacement buses - I once left 7 behind in one go at Thetford) so I can't imagine the Cambridge to Ipswich service is much different.

 

[infoman]

There were approx FIFTY passengers in the waiting room at Ipswich which was two train loads, as one Norwich to Whitham train had been cancelled.

 

[306024]

Without dates / times it is impossible to comment on what Ipswich station staff should or shouldn't have done. Even with a cancellation, it could still be quicker to simply wait for the next service via Witham. More info is needed, infoman.

 

[Haywain]

There were approx FIFTY passengers in the waiting room at Ipswich which was two train loads, as one Norwich to Whitham train had been cancelled.

Fifty people was two train loads? That isn't even one bus load!

 

[dk1]

GA often receive complaints from EMT during blocks on the GEML. Their conductors refuse travel for anyone on advance GA tickets quite rightly in my opinion as the overcrowding is accute during these times. Even 3-car 170s on the Norwich-Cambridge are showing as FAS by Wymondham.

 

[Alfie1014]

It's a difficult one as even though passengers were being directed via Stansted those in the know (and if their tickets allowed) may have chosen to travel via Cambridge to avoid the bus replacement, though as ever this was well organised (GA have plenty of practice!). On the other hand the hauled services that I saw over the holiday period, which other than New Years Day were half hourly for most of the day, were very lightly loaded. The 17:47 arrival from Witham at Ipswich on the 27/12 had little more than a couple of dozen passengers on the whole train. This compared to very busy VTEC, XC and EMT services I observed earlier in the day whilst travelling down from the NE. I'm not sure whether it was simply depressed demand due to the widespread publicity of the engineering works over the Christmas period or whether many were travelling via Cambs? Though it was ironic that the big capacity hauled sets were running around under used when the DMU fleet was overcrowded. Does make you wonder whether even accounting for the difficulties of running hauled sets via Cambridge whether trying to run a limited service that way with the 68s off of the short sets at least on the 28-30th would have been worth while?

 

[infoman]

In my opinion its about staff being proactive and getting customers
"on the move".
I was travelling on a Fareham to Brighton on a slow late running train.
We pulled into one station, T/M said due to late running we will have to wait for
the express train to pull into the station and go first.
T/M said if any one wanted to get to Brighton faster,alight onto same level platform,which will give an earler time in Brighton.
T/M could have just stayed stum but they didn't,
and T/M ended up with a near empty train.
Time of day was approx 8pm ish on a saturday evening.

 

[LowLevel]

Yet 50 people is already a third of the seated capacity of the 2 car DMU you might have ended up further down the line.

I always apologise for the diversion etc and be professional about it but I really hate working to Norwich on a Sunday at the moment as our trains are often full and standing from front to back between Norwich and Ely and you end up having fights about bikes and luggage and leaving your own passengers behind at Thetford.

 

[306024]

In my opinion its about staff being proactive and getting customers
"on the move".
I was travelling on a Fareham to Brighton on a slow late running train.
We pulled into one station, T/M said due to late running we will have to wait for
the express train to pull into the station and go first.
T/M said if any one wanted to get to Brighton faster,alight onto same level platform,which will give an earler time in Brighton.
T/M could have just stayed stum but they didn't,
and T/M ended up with a near empty train.
Time of day was approx 8pm ish on a saturday evening.

Is that the Ipswich journey, or the Fareham anecdote? If Ipswich, then sorry, there are parts of this that don't add up.

If you were going to Ipswich and had coach from Stansted to Witham, that would have been 28/29/30 of December.

If you were coming back on a Saturday, that would be New Year's Eve. According to RTT, all trains ran as booked around 8pm ish.

Hmmm......

 

[bb21]

In my opinion its about staff being proactive and getting customers "on the move".

... while keeping in mind the interests of all customers.

That point is often forgotten when people focus on the issue of themselves being slightly inconvenienced.

 

[Sleepy]

Many passengers may also have been travelling to Colchester or Chelmsford etc. which generate fair numbers of passengers to/from Ipswich.

 

[infoman]

Thank you for all your replys,
just to clarify on the day it was Ipswich to Witham by train.
Bus journey to Newbury Park from Witham
Then underground to central London from Newbury Park.