Underground destination tickets changing at Stevenage on trainsplit

[AnkleBoots]

I have been playing around with Trainsplit and it offers some interesting itineraries on Advance tickets between London area stations and Doncaster using Thameslink between Stevenage and London.

For example searching Euston to Doncaster offers a Zone 1-2 to Doncaster with a change at Finsbury Park and Stevenage.

And Greenford to Doncaster a Zone 1-4 to Doncaster ticket with a change at Farringdon and Stevenage.

Am I right in thinking these are Stevenage&Connections tickets? Is there any reason that these tickets can't be used to Kings Cross?

 

[yorkie]

You are supposed to stick to the booked trains on Advance tickets.

If you want to go via King's Cross, specify via King's Cross under advanced options.

However it will often be quicker* to take the Victoria Line to FPK followed by a non stop GTR train to Stevenage for cross platform connection

* From a journey planning perspective as the connection times are far lower than via KGX

 

[Royston Vasey]

As I understand it you're splitting tickets at Stevenage.

It depends what the Stevenage - London Z12 ticket being sold to you is (Off Peak Single/Return?), but I there are no Thameslink-only advances on that route so it shouldn't be an advance on that portion. A flexible SVG to Z12/Z1234 is valid via Kings Cross, Farringdon or Finsbury Park to travel into the London zones.

So i think you mean you're splitting a Doncaster-Stevenage advance with a flexible SVG- London Zone ticket as there is no other way to split there.

If so, then my advice would be to change at Farringon for the Circle Line for Paddington for Greenford as it is about a five step/ten second walk from Thameslink to Circle on that trip. And walk from Kings Cross to Euston on the other trip.

Just let us know what the tickets to and from Stevenage are called as offered by Trainsplit for us to confirm.


Edit - if it's a through advance with a change at Stevenage then it depends if you're offered a counted place reservation on the Thameslink connection. If so, best to stick to the trains but very unlikely to be an issue to change in zone 1 c.f. FPK. The underground barriers will either dumbly open or dumbly flag "seek assistance" and if so the "assistance" will wave you through.

 

[yorkie]

Yes if it's splitting at Stevenage, the ticket will be valid equally via the Metropolitan or Victoria lines.

My strong advice is to book the exact itinerary you want to travel (use advanced options if necessary), not just for validity purposes, but to ensure you are indisputably protected in the event of delays and that your entitlement to be carried on the next available trains and claim delay compensation is not questioned.

 

[AnkleBoots]

Sorry my initial post was vague on detail. Here's an example, although with Peterborough rather than Stevenage as the change point.


Your Outbound Journey, Friday, 13 December, 2019
Doncaster Peterborough
1 hr 3 mins
12:25 13:28
London North Eastern Railway train service to London Kings Cross (details)
wait for 26 mins (info)
Peterborough Finsbury Park
1 hr 13 mins
13:54 15:07
Thameslink train service to Horsham (details)
On arrival, go straight to the tube
Finsbury Park London Euston
16 mins
Take the tube from Finsbury Park to London Euston

Ticket
Doncaster to London Undergrnd Zone 1-2
Advance Single (BUS) £49.50
Only valid on booked London North Eastern Railway services and required connecting services.
This is the public (undiscounted) fare.
Restriction GC applies

Question
Most people would prefer to stay on the LNER train to Kings Cross, so does that ticket allow doing so?

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

Sorry my initial post was vague on detail. Here's an example, although with Peterborough rather than Stevenage as the change point.


Your Outbound Journey, Friday, 13 December, 2019
Doncaster Peterborough
1 hr 3 mins
12:25 13:28
London North Eastern Railway train service to London Kings Cross (details)
wait for 26 mins (info)
Peterborough Finsbury Park
1 hr 13 mins
13:54 15:07
Thameslink train service to Horsham (details)
On arrival, go straight to the tube
Finsbury Park London Euston
16 mins
Take the tube from Finsbury Park to London Euston

Ticket
Doncaster to London Undergrnd Zone 1-2
Advance Single (BUS) £49.50
Only valid on booked London North Eastern Railway services and required connecting services.
This is the public (undiscounted) fare.
Restriction GC applies

Question
Most people would prefer to stay on the LNER train to Kings Cross, so does that ticket allow doing so?

It's not intended to be used on LNER from Peterborough onwards and the reason TrainSplit has put you onto the Thameslink service from there is likely because it enables a cheaper tier of Advance to be sold.

However, it's very difficult to see how such a restriction can be enforced in this particular case, given the fact that Thameslink services don't have reservations (not even counted places), so the service you are intended to take will not show up if you have a paper ticket (on E-Tickets and some M-Tickets it may).

Thisbeing the case, and the official instruction being that you should take an "appropriate service" for unreserved legs of the journey, I fail to see how an ordinary passenger would find anything other than the LNER service they arrive into Peterborough on, as the most appropriate service. They're all non-overtaken (for getting to King's Cross) and it's the most convenient option.

I would be highly surprised if any LNER staff would take umbrage to you travelling on an LNER service on an "LNER & connections" ticket, for the part where no service is specified!

Some suggest that you can only use unreservable services for unreserved portions of your journey but this is a restriction which is only communicated to ticketing websites. Customers are never told this and so it's quite clearly an unenforceable restriction.

You should, of course, in theory take your booked services only with an Advance, but this is contradicted by what National Rail says, and in any case how is someone to know what services they're booked on if they don't have the booking confirmation handy in front of them (or if they didn't even book the tickets themselves)?

You'll be fine continuing on the service in all likelihood.

 

[AnkleBoots]

Thank you

so the service you are intended to take will not show up if you have a paper ticket (on E-Tickets and some M-Tickets it may).

Sounds like another example of E and M tickets being more restrictive than paper tickets.

 

[kieron]

Sorry my initial post was vague on detail. Here's an example, although with Peterborough rather than Stevenage as the change point.


Your Outbound Journey, Friday, 13 December, 2019
...
Take the tube from Finsbury Park to London Euston

Did you ask it for a journey to Euston? That may be why it gives the route it does.

NRE gives the same sort of thing if I ask for Doncaster-Euston, simply because it calculates that 12:25 departure would get me to Euston at 14:42, whereas using a transfer from Kings Cross would delay my arrival in Euston to 14:43. There's no 14:57 departure from Euston, so selecting any destination beyond Euston makes it switch to the simpler route.

The price may be different in each case, but I don't know if trainsplit chooses a route based on price, or if it just uses the price to choose tickets for a route it has already selected.

Sounds like another example of E and M tickets being more restrictive than paper tickets.

Maybe. I don't know whose tickets gwrtimetable19 is thinking of, but they'd only be more restrictive if they say you have to catch those specific unreservable trains, or don't distinguish between reservable and unreservable ones.

I hope they wouldn't do that deliberately. No-one wants to tell someone to catch a specific train from Moorfields to Liverpool Lime Street, surely?