Has "London Terminals" been discontinued

[grove]

Has the concept of "London Terminals" been quietly dropped from the National Rail journey planner / ticketing?

It no longer appears in the list of stations displayed when you type "London ..." as a destination and you seem to be forced to select a specific London station when travelling from the south of the Thames (e.g. Brighton, Southern and Thameslink branches). If you select "London (All Stations)" which is available you get a set of results with many different prices depending which destination you choose.

This is frustrating as I would often travel to one London terminal e.g. Victoria and return from Blackfriars or London Bridge. It is not at all clear if you buy say a London Bridge ticket whether it would be valid to or from Victoria.

Does anyone know what is going on here and how to get around the problem?

Thanks.

 

[Haywain]

Where would you be travelling from?

 

[grove]

Three Bridges

 

[dontteleport]

Has the concept of "London Terminals" been quietly dropped from the National Rail journey planner / ticketing?

It no longer appears in the list of stations displayed when you type "London ..." as a destination and you seem to be forced to select a specific London station when travelling from the south of the Thames (e.g. Brighton, Southern and Thameslink branches).

I got a ticket marked 'London Terminals' from Brighton last week. I think it may have been removed from booking engines as a specific search term, but brfares shows it still exists, alongside 'London Thameslink' which is slightly different.

I'd speculate this is done most likely to avoid people purchasing these tickets for terminals they aren't valid to, e.g. Brighton to Paddington, as the term is slightly confusing in this regard. So perhaps your itinerary or booking summary says Victoria, but the ticket that is printed will be for the Terminals.

This is frustrating as I would often travel to one London terminal e.g. Victoria and return from Blackfriars or London Bridge. It is not at all clear if you buy say a London Bridge ticket whether it would be valid to or from Victoria.

Does anyone know what is going on here and how to get around the problem?

These tickets (at least on Brighton flows) are SDR and SVR if you want to be sure before you book. Brfares will also show you 'Ticket issued to: London Terminals' for the relevant fares. This should ensure you still have that flexibility.

 

[Spamcan81]

I purchased a London Terminals ticket from Letchworth on Friday.

 

[grove]

I purchased a London Terminals ticket from Letchworth on Friday.

Which ticket provider was that? When you entered your destination did London Terminals appear in the selection or was that what was printed on the ticket after you perhaps selected London Kings Cross?

 

[TUC]

London Terminals appears on the LNER app.

 

[ThameslinkUser]

Works for me?

 

[Adam Williams]

This is doing to be a long thread if every post is an example of a different retailer which does allow searches to London Terminals!

Frankly, as much as some might like to believe otherwise, National Rail Enquiries is at best a tool for planning journeys, not for buying tickets. "London (All Stations)" is just an OJP group of stations for timetabling/journey planning purposes, it has no relation to the London Terminals fares group.

 

[OscarH]

London Terminals very much still exists for fares purposes.

When buying online and you select a group, journey planners assume that you're saying you don't care where in the group you end up, just you want to be there (this is what the majority typically want, they'll either know the specific station they want to go, or don't know the city and just want to get there), so they search to any of the group locations, and pick the cheapest fare, whether it's to the group or the specific station. This can sometimes be annoying to those who know about ticketing and specifically want a group destination, but in the end it's a minority of cases.

That said, any good frontend will still make it clear whether the ticket is to a specific terminal, or the group.

Because of the above some retailers call it London (Any) instead to avoid misleading that you'll definitely get a London Terminals ticket. As Adam says, it's also possible the NRE London (Any) isn't a 1-1 match with London Terminals, I'm not sure.

 

[Adam Williams]

possible the NRE London (Any) isn't a 1-1 match with London Terminals

It's definitely a Silverrail thing insofar as you can type in "182" and you'll get that same pseudo-group surfaced in NRE's dropdown. I think they do diverge, for example I believe Vauxhall is in the fares-"London Terminals" but not in 182, so if you do a search with NRE from a location to "London (All Stations)" it won't surface opportunities ending in Vauxhall, even if that might be permissible with a London Terminals ticket.

 

[Spamcan81]

Which ticket provider was that? When you entered your destination did London Terminals appear in the selection or was that what was printed on the ticket after you perhaps selected London Kings Cross?

Booking office at the station. I asked for a London terminals ticket and that’s what I got with the words printed on the ticket

 

[TheTallOne]

Still seems to be in use.

I couldn't find the train station I wanted on the ticket machine. Ended up buying a ticket from the person in the window (good that there was someone).

Apparently I was supposed to search for London Terminals, rather than the actual train station.

Would be good if you could search for either! Especially for those that don't travel to London often.

 

[yorkie]

Has the concept of "London Terminals" been quietly dropped from the National Rail journey planner / ticketing?

It no longer appears in the list of stations displayed when you type "London ..." as a destination and you seem to be forced to select a specific London station when travelling from the south of the Thames (e.g. Brighton, Southern and Thameslink branches). If you select "London (All Stations)" which is available you get a set of results with many different prices depending which destination you choose.

This is frustrating as I would often travel to one London terminal e.g. Victoria and return from Blackfriars or London Bridge. It is not at all clear if you buy say a London Bridge ticket whether it would be valid to or from Victoria.

Does anyone know what is going on here and how to get around the problem?

Thanks.

Are you buying a ticket? If so, I wouldn't use NRE; you may want to consider using our forum's ticketing site? Select "London (All Stations)"



In the list of fares, the London Terminals tickets are the ones that don't specify that they are to a specific terminal and aren't Travelcards.

If you are just doing journey planning without fares, then you may want to consider www.fastjp.com instead of NRE. (FastJP is the journey planner that powers the forum ticketing site)

 

[ThisIsSurbiton]

Frankly, as much as some might like to believe otherwise, National Rail Enquiries is at best a tool for planning journeys, not for buying tickets. "London (All Stations)" is just an OJP group of stations for timetabling/journey planning purposes, it has no relation to the London Terminals fares group.

Yes, and NRE never had "London Terminals" did it - just the search group. No planner should have offered the fare group, IMO. It's confusing the concepts.

 

[Adam Williams]

Yes, and NRE never had "London Terminals" did it - just the search group. No planner should have offered the fare group, IMO. It's confusing the concepts.

Agree with this. I think part of this is also customers not knowing what they want, or how any of this stuff works. We get customer support queries, usually from more rail enthusiasts, along the lines of "I searched to $locationThatIActuallyWantedToBeAFaresLocation but I got sold a ticket with a different fares location, the system is broken!"

If you ask a journey planner for journeys to Birmingham (Any) or Birmingham New Street, Moor Street or Snow Hill that doesn't represent a requirement to only be sold Birmingham Stations tickets. You might well be sold a group stations ticket, if that's the most appropriate fare. Equally, you might be sold a point-to-point ticket to a specific individual station. If you want to stipulate exactly the fare to buy, you'd be better off going and finding a dumb TVM (though these are a bit of a rare breed nowadays)

 

[MrJeeves]

If you ask a journey planner for journeys to Birmingham (Any) or Birmingham New Street, Moor Street or Snow Hill that doesn't represent a requirement to only be sold Birmingham Stations tickets. You might well be sold a group stations ticket, if that's the most appropriate fare. Equally, you might be sold a point-to-point ticket to a specific individual station. If you want to stipulate exactly the fare to buy, you'd be better off going and finding a dumb TVM (though these are a bit of a rare breed nowadays)

The only mild annoyance for cases like this can be that if you do a search from Group A to Group B and buy an advance, then go and submit a change of journey, you might find you depart from or arrive at a different group member which means the CoJ isn't possible (or must be manually done).

I'd like to think common sense would prevail but I'm genuinely not sure whether that should/shouldn't be accepted as a replacement journey off the top of my head.

For examples like yours with Birmingham, though, you can of course do a search from the original group member with a via point of the desired one (e.g. New Street via Moor Street) to force the journey origin/destination to be the same, but it could be a pain where there no unticketable fixed link (e.g., a tube link) which might mean you end up paying extra as a result.