Cross-operator ticket acceptance announced (excluding East Midlands Railway, OAOs) when services are cancelled

[Bletchleyite]

I had this fight with them before on CrossCountry 1st tix, I had to explain that yes, XC did have catering!

The other TOC is mostly TPE, and they do too, arguably better than Avanti's!

 

[Russel]

If TfW is going to be responsible for train services on key routes in England like Manchester to Hereford, Manchester to Chester, Shrewsbury to Birmingham, they need to have this in place for these routes really.

Agreed, any Scotrail or TFW service that enters England needs to be included in this.

 

[D1537]

Agreed, any Scotrail or TFW service that enters England needs to be included in this.

The only Scotrail service that enters England is the GSW and they're the only TOC on that route. I suppose there may be occasions when there's a blockage on the WCML north of Carlisle and people want to use it vice TPE or Avanti.

 

[ScotTrains]

Do you now HAVE to get the next train, or can you still wait an hour or so to catch the next train by you original provider?

Say I had a Transpennine only 1st class from Manchester to Scotland and it's cancelled, can I wait for the next one in an hour, or do I now have to slum it in Northern Standard class to say Preston, then Avanti (with their inferior 1st catering) up to Scotland?
I'd certainly rather wait an hour for the next direct Transpennine!

Also, how would delay repay work in this situation?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Do you now HAVE to get the next train, or can you still wait an hour or so to catch the next train by you original provider?

Any train, direct or connectional, within the next two hours of your cancellation. Often the first one is a bad choice as it'll be heaving!

(I also heard "the next two trains" mentioned in the past but that'll usually be within that unless you're off to rural Scotland or Wales).

Obviously though if you further delay yourself by choice Delay Repay is arguably only payable based on the shortest delay you could have incurred, unless you physically could not board that next train. You can't claim an hour just because you were 397 bashing and didn't want a Pendolino in half an hour. Of course this is one reason to do this - it will save the railway money!

 

[35B]

Agreed, any Scotrail or TFW service that enters England needs to be included in this.

The only Scotrail service that enters England is the GSW and they're the only TOC on that route. I suppose there may be occasions when there's a blockage on the WCML north of Carlisle and people want to use it vice TPE or Avanti.

It's not just that - there's also overlapping service from LNER, while TfW overlap English operators in a number of places. This needs Holyrood and Cardiff Bay to sit down and act like adults with DfT, and accept that they are part of a common network rather than geographically isolated (I'm less bothered about London and Merseyrail as the overlaps are much less significant)

 

[Russel]

It's not just that - there's also overlapping service from LNER, while TfW overlap English operators in a number of places. This needs Holyrood and Cardiff Bay to sit down and act like adults with DfT, and accept that they are part of a common network rather than geographically isolated (I'm less bothered about London and Merseyrail as the overlaps are much less significant)

Indeed, TFW and ScotRail are part of one, integrated and overlapping network, weather they or their respective governments like it or not.

 

[TUC]

This shouldn't be the passenger's problem to care about!


And I'm glad you've highlighted the viable and sensible solution.

My issue isn't particularly with the OAOs being excluded, but more the local concession operators like Elizabeth Line, Overground, Merseyrail, and also the devolved public operators ScotRail and TfW. I think it's appalling that they are not part of the scheme.

This is certainly a big step in the right direction, but there's still progress to be made in my view.

It is particularly striking that the operators above are ones where the authorities concerned have made a great virtue out of the greater state control of their operations/franchises, yet seem unwilling to adopt this very obviously public benefit.

 

[35B]

Indeed, TFW and ScotRail are part of one, integrated and overlapping network, weather they or their respective governments like it or not.

And, by the same token, DfT need to be clear that GBR is not the same as "every passenger train in Britain". Instead of which they are simply ignoring the existence of these other operators

 

[Bletchleyite]

It is particularly striking that the operators above are ones where the authorities concerned have made a great virtue out of the greater state control of their operations/franchises, yet seem unwilling to adopt this very obviously public benefit.

Is it not just that DfT can effectively impose this on English operators because they are under their direct control (and revenue risk) so they've done the easy bit first? And it's in the interest of the still-private operations to play along nicely. It's not their money in the end, they are all under DfT revenue risk.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 14 Sep 2026 ==

And, by the same token, DfT need to be clear that GBR is not the same as "every passenger train in Britain". Instead of which they are simply ignoring the existence of these other operators

How do you know they are ignoring it?

 

[lowe1409]

It's not just that - there's also overlapping service from LNER, while TfW overlap English operators in a number of places. This needs Holyrood and Cardiff Bay to sit down and act like adults with DfT, and accept that they are part of a common network rather than geographically isolated (I'm less bothered about London and Merseyrail as the overlaps are much less significant)

Can't speak for London, but with Merseyrail it's much less overlap and much more alternate routing. Let's say you're traveling Manchester to Southport with a 'via wigan' routed ticket and there is disruption in Wigan, you have the choice of traveling via Liverpool if merseyrail would accept the tickets

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 14 Sep 2026 ==

How do you know they are ignoring it?

The press release doesn't acknowledge the existence of other operators. I think it possibly mentions open access in the guardian article, but nothing about devolved operators

 

[Bletchleyite]

The press release doesn't acknowledge the existence of other operators. I think it possibly mentions open access in the guardian article, but nothing about devolved operators

Press release in "only mentioning the positives" shocker...did one ever not do that aside from one commiserating some sort of disaster?

 

[35B]

How do you know they are ignoring it?

The press release doesn't acknowledge the existence of other operators. I think it possibly mentions open access in the guardian article, but nothing about devolved operators

Precisely. There is not even a hint of acknowledgement of a world outside DfT control. Even allowing for the joys of PR and writing press releases, this is a significant tell about the mindset of DfT.

It would be perfectly possible to include references to OA and devolved operators, and include a pointy reference to "we look forward to their joining in this" - nothing. It's as though the rest of the network doesn't even exist.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Can't speak for London, but with Merseyrail it's much less overlap and much more alternate routing. Let's say you're traveling Manchester to Southport with a 'via wigan' routed ticket and there is disruption in Wigan, you have the choice of traveling via Liverpool if merseyrail would accept the tickets

Yeah that's the thing about Merseyrail, it provides alternatives for quite a lot of journeys by how well it is connected - and even most walk-up tickets aren't valid that way unless they started somewhere on it. It is also, due to its insularity, almost completely immune to disruption elsewhere on the network such as Castlefield bringing half the North West down.

OK, it's only going to cost you about 7 quid to bring it in yourself if you need to, I suppose (off peak). But still.

 

[A S Leib]

Does there already tend to be ticket acceptance on the Elizabeth Line (and Piccadilly line) if the Heathrow Express has issues? Would GWR operation of HX make any difference?

 

[Adam Williams]

It is particularly striking that the operators above are ones where the authorities concerned have made a great virtue out of the greater state control of their operations/franchises, yet seem unwilling to adopt this very obviously public benefit.

cough TfL

It is very rare for there to be acceptance during rail strikes on the Underground, the passenger is just expected to pay even though it's not their fault.

 

[Paul Kelly]

Obviously though if you further delay yourself by choice Delay Repay is arguably only payable based on the shortest delay you could have incurred

It seems like short notice for the TOCs to negotiate software change requests with the third parties who provide the software handling their delay repay claims. But it should theoretically save them money on compensation - could this be part of the reasoning behind this announcement?

 

[lowe1409]

Yeah that's the thing about Merseyrail, it provides alternatives for quite a lot of journeys by how well it is connected - and even most walk-up tickets aren't valid that way unless they started somewhere on it. It is also, due to its insularity, almost completely immune to disruption elsewhere on the network such as Castlefield bringing half the North West down.

OK, it's only going to cost you about 7 quid to bring it in yourself if you need to, I suppose (off peak). But still.

Exactly, it would be massively useful to bring in. And how is a regular passenger to know that their Via Wigan ticket won't work for Merseyside when the week before, they travel'd to Scotland on a 'via Preston' ticket, and LNER accepted due to issues.

Up thread people mention consitancy and this is an example of lack of. It feels like a sizable portion of passengers don't see Northern, or TPE, or Merseyrail, and just see a train. And they get understandable frustrated when they get told 'no, you can't take that train to Chester, with your ticket, even though your train was canceled and it's not your fault, you got to wait for this train instead in an hour's time, assuming that one doesn't get canceled too'

 

[Bletchleyite]

It seems like short notice for the TOCs to negotiate software change requests with the third parties who provide the software handling their delay repay claims. But it should theoretically save them money on compensation - could this be part of the reasoning behind this announcement?

I'm sure it is. Why would DfT, which is paying for revenue risk on all English TOCs whether public or private, want to pay the extra DR that results from keeping people delayed for longer? It's not as if many of those are going to buy another ticket to be able to travel sooner (and if they do they'll likely refund the original one), so there's no financial benefit in not having cross-acceptance.

 

[WesternLancer]

In reality, my experience is that the majority of staff will be pragmatic about this and will allow passengers to do whatever is reasonable to recover from journey disruption, regardless of frivolous ticketing matters. I've never personally encountered staff being difficult when I'm not on my booked train with an Advance, for example, regardless of whether this is due to a missed connection or a cancellation.

There are of course also cases where - despite the fact they are dealing with a passenger who has already been thoroughly inconvenienced - the railway will choose to make life harder for them. We read about it enough on this forum. In honesty I struggle to understand why staff choose to enforce this, given they would generally have the discretion not to - I suspect they are probably faced with pressure from above.

It is in these latter situations that this sort of policy is really needed, and it really needs to be worded in a watertight way. I can't imagine it is actually the intention of the government for it not to apply to missed connections, but I agree they need to state explicitly that it does.

I just think there needs to be some appreciation that despite several decades of marketing people trying to convince them otherwise, most passengers don't care who operates their train and broadly just think of "the railway" as a single entity. When things go wrong, a railway that still tries to get them home as quickly and smoothly as it can makes them feel cared for and builds goodwill. A railway that argues with them about ticketing conditions they don't understand, and tells them they can't get the next train home because it's the wrong colour (despite not being able to catch the right-coloured one), makes them feel unvalued as a customer and dissuaded from rail travel, and will hurt the railway in the long term - all for precisely no benefit except presumably making someone somewhere feel clever.

I do agree with these points

But why does it still seem to be so complicated?.....'you can do this apart from on x operator because they have got lots of other problems' and a,b.c operators are not mentioned etc etc

Why has this taken about 2 years plus to announce?

Why could this not have been introduced within days of the General Election -might have helped govt show to passengers something was actually going to change as a result of the election..... (govt was taking the revenue risk anyway and everyone knew that it was all going to be brought in house and under direct government control as a consequence of the election victory so why not just do it?). In fact strikes me that even the conservatives could have done it once the operators all accepted that DfT was taking the revenue risk right back from start of the covid pandemic

 

[Bletchleyite]

Why could this not have been introduced within days of the General Election -might have helped govt show to passengers something was actually going to change as a result of the election..... (govt was taking the revenue risk anyway and everyone knew that it was all going to be brought in house and under direct government control as a consequence of the election victory so why not just do it?). In fact strikes me that even the conservatives could have done it once the operators all accepted that DfT was taking the revenue risk right back from start of the covid pandemic

It could have been done the day after the Government took control of revenue risk during COVID, as at that point individual operator revenue became irrelevant and never became relevant again. Why not is anyone's guess.

 

[WesternLancer]

Why would DfT, which is paying for revenue risk on all English TOCs whether public or private, want to pay the extra DR that results from keeping people delayed for longer? It's not as if many of those are going to buy another ticket to be able to travel sooner (and if they do they'll likely refund the original one), so there's no financial benefit in not having cross-acceptance.

I think this puts my point in post #80 / thinking more clearly!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 14 Sep 2026 ==

It could have been done the day after the Government took control of revenue risk during COVID, as at that point individual operator revenue became irrelevant and never became relevant again. Why not is anyone's guess.

thank you
I suppose it's possible the conservatives wanted to retain the pretence of privatisation and private operators perhaps - or envisaged going back to the prior arrangements after covid without realising that the ridership and income levels would be changed forever by wider things that happened as a result of covid - eg working from home for many previous 5 days a week commuters.
But as Labour made their intentions clear in their manifesto - and then won a big majority - they could have got on with it 2 years ago.

 

[Adam Williams]

Because we're not very good at cracking on and actually doing things in this country.

You only have to look at the woefully inadequate progress against the house-building targets to see it. Or the faffing around with HS2 whilst costs spiralled.

 

[WesternLancer]

Because we're not very good at cracking on and actually doing things in this country.

You only have to look at the woefully inadequate progress against the house-building targets to see it. Or the faffing around with HS2 whilst costs spiralled.

well yes, but to be fair doing those does have a variety of inter relationships and complexities, as actually building things is a bit more complicated (need for skilled builders for example, to actually build the homes) - but altering ticket acceptance would surely have been a bit close to a 'stroke of a pen' action to crack on with.
I'm not sure there had been any evidence that anyone in govt had actually thought of doing it.....

 

[158801]

Bonkers idea in my opinion.

My Northern train from Sunderland to Newcastle at 1201 is cancelled. I'm trying to get to Swindon.

So, rather than use XC from Newcastle to Cheltenham and then Great Western to Swindon I decide to use Northern to Thornaby which departs at 1400. Then TPE to York, LNER to Kings Cross (but I could be adventurous and use Great Northern from Peterborough) before finally using Great Western to Swindon.

Trying to police this from a member of staff"s perspective is going to be difficult.

To me, the policy should be

"If your train is cancelled, and there is not another train with the original operator(s) up to 1 hour earlier or 1 hour later then you may use any participating operator to reach your destination".

This would, I believe, cut down on at least 95% of people using alternative routes and alternatives operators. The people who have an LNR ticket and then jump on Avanti would be significantly reduced

 

[Bletchleyite]

Trying to police this from a member of staff"s perspective is going to be difficult.

Seems pretty easy to me. Check if the original intended train was cancelled (which in most cases will be printed on the ticket, if not ask them what it was). If it was cancelled, they can in effect do what they like within vague reason*. If you really wanted to belt-and-braces it, check the ticket wasn't purchased after the time of the cancelled train and thus someone deliberately trying it on.

What reason would there be to police it any more than that unless you actively enjoyed offering poor customer service?

* Presenting a Denton-Reddish South single at Euston might be seen as taking the mick, but at Manchester Piccadilly it's quite obviously sensible, say.

 

[py_megapixel]

Trying to police this from a member of staff"s perspective is going to be difficult.

Then, to be completely blunt, don't.

What's wrong with giving passengers - who have already been inconvenienced by the railway, and just want to get on their way as quickly as possible - the benefit of the doubt?

I am aware that there will be some front-line staff who feel they can't show that sort of discretion because of pressures from upper management, and in that case I think the management people responsible for that need to make a concerted effort to change the attitude amongst their staff.

 

[Watershed]

If TfW is going to be responsible for train services on key routes in England like Manchester to Hereford, Manchester to Chester, Shrewsbury to Birmingham, they need to have this in place for these routes really.

Agreed. Whilst it's a welcome first step you the devolved operators really need to join the agreement soon. Sadly if the disputes about the new TfW Bristol service are anything to go by, I doubt it will be as smooth as that.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 14 Sep 2026 ==

It seems like short notice for the TOCs to negotiate software change requests with the third parties who provide the software handling their delay repay claims. But it should theoretically save them money on compensation - could this be part of the reasoning behind this announcement?

I'm not sure, that Delay Repay systems currently take any account of ticket restrictions. You often see claims being calculated in a way that suggests that you are less delayed than you actually were, because they assume you can just take the next train.

 

[Howardh]

Obviously this is a step in the right direction as this sort of default cross-acceptance should have been the default from day one. I do worry that some of the implications haven't been fully thought through however.

For instance Birmingham to Edinburgh with XC splitting at Sheffield, York and Newcastle. The XC train is cancelled and Avanti operate trains from Birmingham to Edinburgh so it is perfectly valid to jump on the Avanti train. What happens when a train manager or RPI checks tickets at Preston and is presented with a York to Newcastle ticket? Hopefully pragmatism will reign but I can see an awkward interaction resulting at the very least.

Or how about Stevenage to Birmingham via High Wycombe using the outward portion of an Off Peak return in the morning rush hour (there are no peak restrictions on the outward in the morning). GTR cancel the connecting train from Stevenage to London so I head to Euston and jump on Avanti. What happens at the Euston barrier? Or on the train?

It's a good policy overall I just worry that there are edge cases that have been fully thought about and which are going to cause friction points and lead to bad headlines ("Passenger tried to use new railway policy due to cancellation and was prosecuted for not having a valid ticket" etc etc). Which considering the industries already god damn awful reputation is not going to do anyone any favours.

Northern have peak restrictions in the late afternoon within Greater Manchester but I would expect/demand to be able to travel with an off-peak ticket if the intended train, outside peak hours, was cancelled - regardless of which company cancelled the train.

In fact I would like to see if your intended train is cancelled, that becomes an open single - any train company - unrestricted via any reasonable route. Is that the case now/

 

[lowe1409]

In fact I would like to see if your intended train is cancelled, that becomes an open single - any train company - unrestricted via any reasonable route. Is that the case now/

Arguably id say it is better than that, it allows you to travel via routes not covered under 'any permitted' such as Manchester to Carlisle via Newcastle depending on if it's reasonable given the disruption and is the quickest/most reliable route for the passenger