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Hi my colleague is travelling to Dublin , Ireland on a sail rail ticket and arriving back on the 15th September. At Holyhead What permitted routes are there into London on that ticket?
Hi my colleague is travelling to Dublin , Ireland on a sail rail ticket and arriving back on the 15th September. At Holyhead What permitted routes are there into London on that ticket?
Hi my colleague is travelling to Dublin , Ireland on a sail rail ticket and arriving back on the 15th September. At Holyhead What permitted routes are there into London on that ticket?
The permitted routes are the same as for a Holyhead-London ticket - although it's worth noting that break of journey is (technically) not supposed to be allowed on any of the available fares. Whether that restriction is communicated adequately as to make it a term of the contract is another matter...
Obviously you must take the North Wales Coast Line from Holyhead as far as Shotton. From there on you can either proceed:
via Chester and Crewe, then
via Birmingham (optionally via Rugeley/Lichfield/Tamworth), then
via the WCML into Euston (optionally via Nuneaton and/or Northampton)
via the Chiltern line into Marylebone (optionally via Coventry)
via Banbury, Oxford and Reading into Paddington (optionally via Coventry)
via the WCML into Euston (optionally via Stoke, and/or Birmingham and connecting branches from the Trent Valley, and/or via Northampton)
via Shrewsbury, then
via the Chiltern line into Marylebone (optionally via Coventry)
via Banbury, Oxford and Reading into Paddington (optionally via Coventry)
via Wrexham, Shrewsbury and Birmingham, then
via the WCML into Euston (optionally via Nuneaton and/or Northampton)
via the Chiltern line into Marylebone (optionally via Coventry)
via Banbury, Oxford and Reading into Paddington (optionally via Nuneaton/Coventry)
So essentially it's a choice of Euston, Marylebone or Paddington and a variety of routes to get to any of those.
As the Sail-Rail ticket is fixed price to/from any national rail station based on fare bands, with London being well into the highest band, you can also choose any other starting point for the same price.
The industrial action planned for the 15th affects pretty much most of the ways into London - as Avanti, Chiltern, CrossCountry & West Midlands trains are all set to strike.
And most of the routes shown by @Watershed include these TOCs except obviously for TFW - but i'm not sure whether Network Rail staff are striking on the 15th also.
If the ASLEF industrial action goes ahead on 15th September - which I suspect it will - the only way to get from Holyhead to London on that date will be to take TfW services from Holyhead to Birmingham via Shrewsbury and then LNR from there to Euston.
The industrial action planned for the 15th affects pretty much most of the ways into London - as Avanti, Chiltern, CrossCountry & West Midlands trains are all set to strike.
And most of the routes shown by @Watershed include these TOCs except obviously for TFW - but i'm not sure whether Network Rail staff are striking on the 15th also.
At the moment it's just ASLEF that have declared a strike for that date. I would be surprised if any other unions do so, because it wouldn't make a significant difference to the level of disruption, and would come at the cost of a day's lost wages for their members.
TfW and EMR drivers are not on strike, hence one of the possible routes for getting down to London during an ASLEF strike would include going via Chester, Manchester and Sheffield.
Whilst this would be a non-permitted route ordinarily, the OP's friend would be entitled to be re-routed at the earliest opportunity in the event of the strike going ahead. Therefore they would be entitled to be re-routed this way, if it is the quickest way of getting to London due to the timetable in place.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
If the ASLEF industrial action goes ahead on 15th September - which I suspect it will - the only way to get from Holyhead to London on that date will be to take TfW services from Holyhead to Birmingham via Shrewsbury and then LNR from there to Euston.
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