Woodmansterne to Birmingham

[infobleep]

I was booking travel from Woodmansterne to Birmingham and back using advanced purchase tickets. I did this on the Virgin Trains Web Site.

On the way up it suggested going via London Bridge. On the way back it seemed to be slightly faster to go via Victoria and change again at East Croydon rather than catch the train from London Bridge all the way.

I booked them but failed to notice the Victoria train has reservations, whereas the Woodmansterne train doesn't.

Thus on the return they must be on a named Victoira train to East Croydon but if I'd booked via London Bridge, they could have got any train they liked, including that Victoira train but not solely that Victoria train. Wouldn't have cost any more either.

One has to be so eagle eyed when booking trains.

Edit: I see what the issue is. The London Bridge train leaves 29 minutes after the Euston train arrives and that is officially too short. As trains every 30 minutes, it's faster via Victoria.

However even if that is the case, one can travel via Victoira even if they specify London Bridge but you cannot travel via London Bridge if you specify Victoria it seems.

 

[swt_passenger]

...However even if that is the case, one can travel via Victoira even if they specify London Bridge but you can travel via London Bridge if you specify Victoria it seems.

Did you mean to write “cannot” above? It rather confuses your main point otherwise...

 

[infobleep]

Did you mean to write “cannot” above? It rather confuses your main point otherwise...

Thank you for pointing that out.

Apart from mistyping words here, I get issues whereby it doesn't insert the autocorrected words I choose correctly from my mobile. This was more likely to be the former though.

 

[moliones]

Thus on the return they must be on a named Victoira train to East Croydon but if I'd booked via London Bridge, they could have got any train they liked, including that Victoira train but not solely that Victoria train. Wouldn't have cost any more either.

I don't think that's quite right. If you have an & Connections ticket with an unreserved leg, you cannot (AFAIUI) travel on a reservable service.

In other situations, if say every other train was reservable, then by selecting one of the non-reservable services, you would still be excluded from half of them.

 

[Joe Paxton]

I don't think that's quite right. If you have an & Connections ticket with an unreserved leg, you cannot (AFAIUI) travel on a reservable service.

In other situations, if say every other train was reservable, then by selecting one of the non-reservable services, you would still be excluded from half of them.

I don't think that's right, not least because a passenger cannot be expected to know which trains are reservable and which are not.

This particular issue has long cropped up on the Brighton Main Line, ever since Southern started doing counted place reservations on many of their non-metro services back in (I think) 2009, in contrast to Thameslink which doesn't have them.

Why did Southern start offering counted place reservations? Well, in addition to enabling them to sell their own Advances (for journeys wholly on Southern trains), I think it also meant that they were able to secure more of a cut of the revenue from Advance tickets from places in Southern-land to places yonder London (Oop north, Westcountry, the Midlands etc) without having to share it with the Thameslink TOC (then FCC). Of course, Southern and Thameslink are now part of the same TOC.

 

[infobleep]

I don't think that's right, not least because a passenger cannot be expected to know which trains are reservable and which are not.

This particular issue has long cropped up on the Brighton Main Line, ever since Southern started doing counted place reservations on many of their non-metro services back in (I think) 2009, in contrast to Thameslink which doesn't have them.

Why did Southern start offering counted place reservations? Well, in addition to enabling them to sell their own Advances (for journeys wholly on Southern trains), I think it also meant that they were able to secure more of a cut of the revenue from Advance tickets from places in Southern-land to places yonder London (Oop north, Westcountry, the Midlands etc) without having to share it with the Thameslink TOC (then FCC). Of course, Southern and Thameslink are now part of the same TOC.

Why didn't FCC do the same and why didn't Southern donut on their metro services.

I wouldn't call Victoira to East Croydon exactly long. It might longer than to London Bridge of course.

It's rather stupid if you ask me and it's not helpful to the passengers either. I should have noticed it though and that isn't their fault. It's not so much stupid that they want to do it but that if I put in via London Bridge I can still travel on the reservation services, as well as those that are not. This makes a mockery of wanting wanting a share of the advanced purchase.

Why don't they want a share within the metro area?