Cambridge Stations ticketing and the forthcoming Cambridge South

Jovian98 · 3 Feb 2026

Currently there is an easement (700714) which states "Tickets to/from Cambridge are also valid at Cambridge North and tickets to/from Cambridge North are also valid at Cambridge. This easement covers all tickets, including season tickets, except Advance tickets"

The problem with this easement is that you often have to debate it with staff at the barriers, and also most passengers don't know about it, meaning that people with a ticket to one station think they need to buy an additional ticket between the two to extend their journey.

Will this be further complicated by any Cambridge South easements or are there plans to enable tickets to be purchased to/from "Cambridge Stations" allowing passengers to choose the best station to board or alight from at the time of travel? What's best way to lobby to get this introduced?

RailUK Forums

MikeWM · 3 Feb 2026

I think this was introduced originally because when Cambridge North opened, most trains from the north didn't stop there (as the 8-car project for Kings Lynn services wasn't completed until 3 years later), so a double-back from Cambridge was usually the quickest way to get there. That's no longer so much the case, though XC still don't stop at North and so during disruption it is still sometimes the case that getting the XC and doing the double-back is quickest, so it is good that the easement still exists.

Everything is planned to stop at Cambridge South, when it finally opens, so a similar easement isn't going to be 'required' in quite the same way.

Kite159 · 3 Feb 2026

In an ideal world when Cambridge South opens, the tickets would be sold to a newly formed "Cambridge Stations" group with the only time a ticket to Cambridge South sold is when someone buys it from Cambridge (or Cambridge North). Similar to other station groups.

Maybe not worded as "Cambridge Stations" to prevent someone trying to use an Ely - "Cambridge Stations" ticket at Cambridge Heath in London.

WolvertonWorks · 3 Feb 2026

Kite159 said:
Maybe not worded as "Cambridge Stations" to prevent someone trying to use an Ely - "Cambridge Stations" ticket at Cambridge Heath in London.

Could they maybe rename Cambridge as Cambridge Central and then the wording could be "Cambridge North, Central and South" or even "Cambridge NCS"?

MikeWM · 3 Feb 2026

WolvertonWorks said:
Could they maybe rename Cambridge as Cambridge Central and then the wording could be "Cambridge North, Central and South" or even "Cambridge NCS"?

Cambridge 'Central' isn't remotely near to the centre of Cambridge though

- it is just a bit closer than North or South are.

I expect they will keep it as it is, see Worthing for example.

Hadders · 3 Feb 2026

Cambridge Stations makes sense for tickets from further afield.

Cambridge could be renamed Cambridge City if Cambridge Central doesn’t sound quite right.

IanMac · 4 Feb 2026

It might be better to rename Cambridge Heath if it's the problem - maybe "Hackney Road"?

gerjomarty · 4 Feb 2026

Before Cambridge North opened, it was added as a fare station, and a new "Cambridge Stations" station group was also added. Most existing tickets weren't moved over to it, though, preferring to just add the Cambridge North station instead. Now that the group is presumably expanding to three stations, I wonder if more fares will be moved to the group rather than added as each individual station. The codes are:

7022 Cambridge
8001 Cambridge North
3181 Cambridge South
8384 Cambridge Stns

I had assumed the easement was added because they didn't move all of the fares over to the station group immediately. I've relied on it a few times and never had an issue at the gateline.

MrJeeves · 5 Feb 2026

gerjomarty said:
Now that the group is presumably expanding to three stations, I wonder if more fares will be moved to the group rather than added as each individual station.

Bizarrely, internal industry information suggests this won't be done.

higthomas · 7 Feb 2026

Seems very odd. It would remove a lot of confusion for passengers and disputes with staff.
(No, I don't believe Cambridge Heath is going to cause great confusion.)

CyrusWuff · 7 Feb 2026

On most tickets it would be printed as "Cambridge, Cambridge North or Cambridge South" (or similar) rather than "Cambridge Stns" anyway.

andy33gmail · 7 Feb 2026

Presumably the workaround if you didn’t want to commit to which station - or wanted to return to another in the group - is to pick Cambridge North if going to London, Cambridge South if going to Lynn. If you want to get to Oxford once the line is completed in 2130 … who knows

higthomas · 8 Feb 2026

andy33gmail said:
Presumably the workaround if you didn’t want to commit to which station - or wanted to return to another in the group - is to pick Cambridge North if going to London, Cambridge South if going to Lynn. If you want to get to Oxford once the line is completed in 2130 … who knows

Obviously that's what a Railforums member would do, but it just not something most members of the public would consider.

Royston Vasey · 8 Jun 2026

I drove into the Addenbrookes campus this morning, past the new station, just before getting stuck in a long queue of traffic trying to access the staff car park, and eventually the visitor car park! It looks finished, bar a handful of Murphy vans and metal hoardings remaining outside. I could probably walk from the station to the Main Reception/A&E in 10 minutes, or the Rosie in 5 minutes. Many visiting either hospital may not be so sprightly.

I also picked up a Greater Anglia leaflet advertising the new station and some selected ticket prices which got me thinking about the value of using the station compared to the car parks. Anyone with an appointment or A&E visit is able to pay a reduced parking rate of £5.80 regardless of stay length - though the main car park is full by about 9am.

Reviewing the pricing from nearby stations, Greater Anglia and GTR have taken a similar approach to Cambridge South. There is no Cambridge Group, as we know, so these are all standalone point to point tickets, but Cambridge and Cambridge North are priced identically. This is usually but not necessarily the case with Cambridge South, where they've treated Shelford, Foxton and Waterbeach differently.

Looking at Off Peak Day Returns for travel on a weekday, Greater Anglia site will offer me the following.

Greater Anglia

From the south

Whittlesford to Cambridge South, Cambridge or Cambridge North are all £8.00.

Shelford to Cambridge South £3.60

Shelford to Cambridge or Cambridge North both £4.80.

From the north

Ely to Cambridge North or Cambridge or Cambridge South £3.70 (GA only).

(The Ely ticket is 23p per mile, and the Whittlesford ticket is £3.74 per mile according to the RailMiles calculator, although 2m11ch seems low!)

Great Northern

From the south

Royston to Cambridge South, Cambridge or Cambridge North £8.50.

Meldreth or Shepreth to Cambridge South, Cambridge or Cambridge North £6.00.

Foxton to Cambridge or Cambridge North £6.00.

Foxton to Cambridge South £4.50.

From the north

Ely to Cambridge North or Cambridge or Cambridge South £6.00 (Any Permitted).

Waterbeach to Cambridge North or Cambridge £3.70.

Waterbeach to Cambridge South £3.80.

So, consistently inconsistent.

Amusingly, the GA leaflet has transposed the GTR prices and the GA prices for Ely, merrily advertising a GTR Off Peak Day Return as £3.70 and a GA Off Peak Day Return at £6.00!

Royston Vasey · 8 Jun 2026

I posted on the main station construction thread about ticket prices from surrounding stations, where only very short journeys are not harmonised in price between the three, but there is no Cambridge Group or interavailability at Cambridge South.

In short,

- Whittlesford, Royston, Meldreth, Shepreth and Ely price Cambridge South, Cambridge and Cambridge North equally
- Foxton and Shelford have cheaper tickets to Cambridge South than Cambridge/Cambridge North (though by no means cheap)
- Waterbeach has slightly more expensive tickets to Cambridge South than Cambridge North/Cambridge by 10p.
- Ely to Cambridge South Off Peak Day Return (GA only) is a snip at £3.70, only 10p more expensive than the 1.8 miles from Shelford!

I note that the forum site will book me connections at Cambridge South but not select it as a destination yet. I note there recently appeared a "Cambridge or Cambridge North or South" in the dropdown, which just books to Cambridge so I guess this is a work in progress @Raileasy . This means that if I want to travel from Foxton to Cambridge South I will be booked an Off Peak return to Cambridge at £6.00 https://tickets.railforums.co.uk/re...6&InboundTime=15:45&Adults=1&OpenReturn=false

In the NR easements file, other than a temporary doubleback last month due to engineering, two easements refer to Cambridge South, and they are just updates to existing negative easements.

700119 Circuitous Route Customers travelling from Shelford via Royston to London Kings Cross, London St Pancras, Faringdon or via Faringdon, may not travel via Cambridge or Cambridge South. This easement applies in both directions.
700120 Circuitous Route Customers travelling from Shelford to London London Liverpool Street via Audley End, may not travel via Cambridge or Cambridge South. This easement applies in both directions.

On the subject of splitting, I declare Cambridge South's first splitting opportunity, for anyone wanting to travel from Foxton to Shelford, instead of buying a £10.50 Off Peak Day Return, they can split at Cambridge South to save £1.90. Or they can save even more by walking, it's a lovely walk!

TheDavibob · 8 Jun 2026

Royston Vasey said:
Reviewing the pricing from nearby stations, Greater Anglia and GTR have taken a similar approach to Cambridge South. There is no Cambridge Group, as we know, so these are all standalone point to point tickets, but Cambridge and Cambridge North are priced identically. This is usually but not necessarily the case with Cambridge South, where they've treated Shelford, Foxton and Waterbeach differently.

Technically this isn't quite true, there is a Cambridge Stations group but it's essentially unused (see https://www.brfares.com/!fares?orig=8384&dest=LTV&period=20260301 for an example of where it is used; this was essentially a dubious interpretation of a request of mine for missing Advances to North). There is also complete inter-availability of non-advance tickets between Cambridge and Cambridge North via a routing easement. I don't think there's any reason for this to hold for Cambridge South, as it's currently probably purely a function of the Cross Country train not stopping at Cambridge North.

Could argue justification for the some of the difference in prices: it's twice as far from Waterbeach to Cambridge South as North (though not central, obviously), and similar arguments for Shelford. Much less clear cut for Foxton. A flat "Cambridge" fare would probably be easier for everyone, though.

TO ADD:
The lowest price "floor" is set by the Cambridge/North to South ticket, which is £3.90 according to Trainline (for an off-peak return). Oddly, Trainline's numbers don't agree with these ones. This forces the Waterbeach to Cambridge South price up, at least. I'm likely to make use of North to South, as it's probably the most efficient way for me to get to the hospital.

alistairlees · 8 Jun 2026

Cambridge Stations (8384) will be expanded to include all three Cambridge stations shortly.

Royston Vasey · 8 Jun 2026

alistairlees said:
Cambridge Stations (8384) will be expanded to include all three Cambridge stations shortly.

Will this have the effect of pushing, say, Shelford to Cambridge South to £4.80 (the price to Cambridge), or would standalone fares still apply, if lower? (in this case £3.60)

I'm going to report my own post and suggest this discussion moves to the Cambridge South ticketing thread, as the (empty) Cambridge Stations grouping is also discussed there.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 8 Jun 2026 ==

TheDavibob said:
TO ADD:
The lowest price "floor" is set by the Cambridge/North to South ticket, which is £3.90 according to Trainline (for an off-peak return). Oddly, Trainline's numbers don't agree with these ones. This forces the Waterbeach to Cambridge South price up, at least. I'm likely to make use of North to South, as it's probably the most efficient way for me to get to the hospital.

Greater Anglia (Trainline backend) is offering £3.90 for Cambridge North to Cambridge South and £3.80 from Waterbeach to Cambridge South, both any permitted off peak day returns!

MrJeeves · 8 Jun 2026

Royston Vasey said:
I note that the forum site will book me connections at Cambridge South but not select it as a destination yet. I note there recently appeared a "Cambridge or Cambridge North or South" in the dropdown, which just books to Cambridge so I guess this is a work in progress

Cambridge Stations has been amended to include all three Cambridge stations.

There's still a lack of fares set up to the station group, though, so you won't see many fares sold to "Cambridge Stations" until TOC pricing teams update the fares they set.

I think it's basically just Avanti who price their own advances to the group at the moment (and have done for years).

Look up fares for any train journey in Britain

Full details of all British rail Single, Return & Season tickets and Travelcards. Built-in Season Ticket Calculator.

www.brfares.com

I don't personally understand why TOCs continue to use the individual stations for pricing their fares, but maybe that will change soon.

Royston Vasey · 8 Jun 2026

MrJeeves said:
Cambridge Stations has been amended to include all three Cambridge stations.

There's still a lack of fares set up to the station group, though, so you won't see many fares sold to "Cambridge Stations" until TOC pricing teams update the fares they set.

I think it's basically just Avanti who price their own advances to the group at the moment (and have done for years).

Slightly more fundamental issue at the moment though, that I cannot select Cambridge South as a destination to book to at all, which I can only GA or Trainline!

CyrusWuff · 8 Jun 2026

MrJeeves said:
I don't personally understand why TOCs continue to use the individual stations for pricing their fares, but maybe that will change soon.

Being generous, I'd suggest a lack of pricing resource and they've just relied on Easement 700714 to make things work.

eNRG said:
Tickets to/from Cambridge are also valid at Cambridge North and tickets to/from Cambridge North are also valid at Cambridge. This easement covers all tickets, including season tickets, except Advance tickets.

Adam Williams · 8 Jun 2026

CyrusWuff said:
they've just relied on Easement 700714 to make things work

Which is of no use to any sort of journey planner, of course

Jimcam · 8 Jun 2026

Royston Vasey said:
700119 Circuitous Route Customers travelling from Shelford via Royston to London Kings Cross, London St Pancras, Faringdon or via Faringdon, may not travel via Cambridge or Cambridge South. This easement applies in both directions.

Does this make sense? If you're going "from Shelford via Royston to London Kings Cross", how do you do that without passing through Cambridge or Cambridge South?

Royston Vasey · 8 Jun 2026

Jimcam said:
Does this make sense? If you're going "from Shelford via Royston to London Kings Cross", how do you do that without passing through Cambridge or Cambridge South?

It doesn't really make sense, it just means you can't do so on a Shelford to London Terminals on one ticket, FCC created it to protect their revenue. It's a clumsy way of prohibiting the doubleback as Shelford to Cambridge is only 3m16ch (3.2 miles) from Shelford, i.e. within 3 miles of the shortest route (I guess the 3 mile rule is rounded down).

A double back at Cambridge South is even shorter, only a deviation of 1mi 56ch from Shelford, but the easement text has been updated since your original thread on this topic, where more knowledgeable people than me explained the detail. The easement now includes Cambridge South, as I speculated would be the case in the replies.

Adam Williams · 8 Jun 2026

Royston Vasey said:
Slightly more fundamental issue at the moment though, that I cannot select Cambridge South as a destination to book to at all, which I can only GA or Trainline!

This has been addressed (at least for the forum site), though it's worth noting (for the wider thread, if nothing else!) GTR have not configured any of the flows involving Cambridge South for E-Ticketability. Have raised it as an issue.

MrJeeves · 8 Jun 2026

Royston Vasey said:
It's a clumsy way of prohibiting the doubleback as Shelford to Cambridge is only 3m16ch (3.2 miles) from Shelford, i.e. within 3 miles of the shortest route (I guess the 3 mile rule is rounded down).

The issue is actually that Cambridge is an appropriate routeing point for a journey from Shelford to London, which makes going up to Cambridge and then into London valid as a mapped journey.

In NFM64, the SDS fare from Cambridge to London and from Shelford to London were both £14.50, so it passed the fares check, even though the CDR was more expensive.

RSPS5047 said:
9.5 Fare Checking

9.5.1 As part of the checking that valid origin and destination routeing points have been found, NFM64 Fares are used to determine whether the supplied journey contains a valid routeing point.

9.5.2 The ORP is permitted if the SOS, SDS, CDS or SVS fare from the origin routeing point to the destination is the same or lower than the fare of that type from the origin to the destination.

Instead of understanding the issue and adding a negative routeing point easement, they just took a blunt instrument to the journey in question and blocked it with a circuitous route easement.

Royston Vasey · 8 Jun 2026

Royston Vasey said:
It doesn't really make sense, it just means you can't do so on a Shelford to London Terminals on one ticket, FCC created it to protect their revenue. It's a clumsy way of prohibiting the doubleback as Shelford to Cambridge is only 3m16ch (3.2 miles) from Shelford, i.e. within 3 miles of the shortest route (I guess the 3 mile rule is rounded down).

A double back at Cambridge South is even shorter, only a deviation of 1mi 56ch from Shelford, but the easement text has been updated since your original thread on this topic, where more knowledgeable people than me explained the detail. The easement now includes Cambridge South, as I speculated would be the case in the replies.

I've just remembered the other/real reason provided which is the fares check rule. The Cambridge-London Any Permitted Off Peak Day Return (CDR) is £27.50 and the Shelford-London Any Permitted CDR is £30.00.

Cambridge is a routing point for Shelford and since the doubleback passes the fares check journey planners would otherwise offer it.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 8 Jun 2026 ==

MrJeeves said:
The issue is actually that Cambridge is an appropriate routeing point for a journey from Shelford to London, which makes going up to Cambridge and then into London valid as a mapped journey.

In NFM64, the SDS fare from Cambridge to London and from Shelford to London were both £14.50, so it passed the fares check, even though the CDR was more expensive.

Instead of understanding the issue and adding a negative routeing point easement, they just took a blunt instrument to the journey in question and blocked it with a circuitous route easement.

I remembered this just after you did! Shelford is now a more expensive origin than Cambridge!

MrJeeves · 8 Jun 2026

Royston Vasey said:
Shelford is now a more expensive origin than Cambridge!

Who wants to bet they raised the fares because it was valid via Cambridge, and then made it not valid via Cambridge!

Edvid · 11 Jun 2026

MrJeeves said:
Cambridge Stations has been amended to include all three Cambridge stations.

There's still a lack of fares set up to the station group, though, so you won't see many fares sold to "Cambridge Stations" until TOC pricing teams update the fares they set.

On that note, the separate stations also have different implementations of PlusBus.

Cambridge South: N/A
Cambridge: £4.50 per day (city and some adjacent villages)
Cambridge North: £5.00 per day (as above, plus busway to St Ives)

Deerfold · 11 Jun 2026

Edvid said:
On that note, the separate stations also have different implementations of PlusBus.

Cambridge South: N/A
Cambridge: £4.50 per day (city and some adjacent villages)
Cambridge North: £5.00 per day (as above, plus busway to St Ives)

Well, that's not going to be at all confusing for bus drivers.

Cambridge Stations ticketing and the forthcoming Cambridge South

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