TfW Customer Services - Won't guarantee Advance Ticket acceptance after late notice Engineering Work

[LittleRedTrain]

Sorry, couldn't think of a more concise thread title:

On 15th April, I booked an Advance ticket (via the Forum site) for Monday 11th May for the 1441 Wolverhampton to Tywyn direct train, arriving 1725

Since then, engineering work has been announced on the Cambrian and this train now terminates at Shrewsbury, with buses from Shrewsbury to Machynlleth and a train onwards to Tywyn.

To arrive at Tywyn at the original time, I'd need to instead board the 1342 from Wolverhampton to Shrewsbury, connecting to the 1430 replacement bus to Machynlleth, and then the 1655 train to Tywyn, arriving at 1725.

This means my existing Advance Ticket isn't technically valid on the 1342. I wasn't expecting any issues with acceptance as TfW staff tend to be pretty pragmatic, but I thought I'd try and get it in writing from TfW customer services just in case:

• Their first response was that I had to amend my Advance ticket to the new itinerary (which would mean it doubles in price)
• When I pushed back, and said that they are entitled to grant me permission to use the 1342, they insisted that they couldn't give me permission, and I'd have to ask station/train staff before boarding, and it would 'probably be fine'.
• I insisted that they do have the right to give me permission without needing to ask the Train Manager, they insisted it was always the TM's discretion about whether to accept the ticket and they have no rights to override it, and they still recommended amending my ticket.

Am I correct here thinking that TfW Customer Services should be considered an 'Authorised Person' here as far as the Railway Byelaws are concerned.
https://assets.publishing.service.g...8a54f8/dft-railway-byelaws-amendment-2025.pdf
18.3 states: No person shall be in breach of Byelaw 18(1) or 18(2) if (iii) an authorised person gave him permission to travel without a valid ticket.
25.1 states: “authorised person” means: (i) a person acting in the course of his duties who: (a) is an employee or agent of an Operator, or (b) any other person authorised by an Operator,

I'd say that a Customer Services agent employed by TfW should meet these criteria.

Also I find it incredibly disingenuous that they are trying to make me amend my ticket to a more expensive one, due to disruption only announced after purchase. Surely this should be treated in the same way as a normal cancellation, where Advance tickets are accepted on the previous or next trains.

Is anyone able to point me to chapter and verse on this?

In practice, it will probably be fine, but I was rather disappointed by the whole interaction.

 

[CyrusWuff]

If TfW have done the amendments correctly, you should receive an email from the forum ticketing site detailing your options.

You're entitled to travel on either of the two services before or after the one you were originally booked on with your existing ticket, though you should also have the option of a full refund (with no admin fee) under Condition 30 of the NRCoT or rebooking (with no change of journey fee.)

This revised policy came into effect on Sunday 18th August 2024, so TfW should be aware of it.

 

[mmh]

Personally I wouldn't bother wasting any time trying to get it amended, you've got a valid ticket for a train that no longer exists. No sane guard is going to get in an argument about you travelling on trains that do exist, and as you say TFW guards in my experience are great and don't bat an eyelid at things like this.

 

[LittleRedTrain]

If TfW have done the amendments correctly, you should receive an email from the forum ticketing site detailing your options.

You're entitled to travel on either of the two services before or after the one you were originally booked on with your existing ticket, though you should also have the option of a full refund (with no admin fee) under Condition 30 of the NRCoT or rebooking (with no change of journey fee.)

No notification of the changes from the forum, and they went in a couple of days after I booked the ticket.
Journey info for the ticket still says this:

[Shows direct train from Wolverhampton to Tywyn]
Clicking on Details shows only the Machynlleth to Tywyn train, with a schedule change on 17th April:



I wonder if the cancellation notification from the forum is broken by the fact that either:
It's a VAR/STP change rather than an actual cancellation.
The original direct train divides at Machynlleth, with the second leg having a different train ID.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 May 2026 ==

Well as it turns out, it was academic.
My CrossCountry connection was 25 min late and none of the regulation opportunities were taken to get it in front of the TfW train, so I'm sampling the delights of Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury for an extra hour each.

Not looking forward to the fight over claiming Delay Repay. My original itinerary being scuppered by the late notice engineering work, my revised one scuppered by CrossCountry.

 

[OscarH]

I wonder if the cancellation notification from the forum is broken by the fact that either:
It's a VAR/STP change rather than an actual cancellation.
The original direct train divides at Machynlleth, with the second leg having a different train ID.

I've finally had a chance to look at this, and you're spot on with the latter.

All retailers across the industry were migrated to a centralised service for backing disruption notifications (at the time most retailers didn't bother, those of us that already did were moved over to this system). It hasn't handled the association in this case, so we've been told the base UID has changed and had stops cancelled, but not been told anything about the associated UID; I'm not sure off the top of my head if this is intended behaviour on their part that they expect us to handle or not.

In terms of the web UI, currently that will always just display the data from the time of booking (it will apply the on-the-day realtime data, but not timetable changes) - this is something we're looking to change so it will reflect the cancelled stops in cases like this.

 

[LittleRedTrain]

Ah, one of those wonderful 'edge cases' that we software engineers love so much!