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London Glasgow via Edinburgh

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Chrisgr31

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2 Aug 2011
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1,702
I want to go to Edinburgh and then on to Glasgow on the same day. If I get an Advance single from Kings Cross to Glasgow via Edinburgh on say the 9.03 from Kings Cross do I have to catch the 13.48 from Edinburgh or can I exit the station and catch a train an hour or two later from Edinburgh?
 
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RailUK Forums

Watershed

Watershed

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26 Sep 2020
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See my comment in response to a similar query:
Watershed said:
If you have an eTicket, your entire booked itinerary - including non-reservable services - will be clearly stated on the eTicket and will be encoded in the barcode. So it will be very obvious if you travel on a different service than booked and I would not recommend it.

If you have a paper ticket, depending on the format you may only have the reservable legs shown. In that's the case you would be travelling within the Advance ticket terms and conditions if you take reasonable alternative services (i.e. not stopping off for an hour). You are tied only to the trains "shown on the ticket" (condition 4.1).

After all, you're not obliged to carry the original itinerary with you when you travel and so you might have no way of determining which unreserved legs you were originally booked to take.


I wouldn't encourage that, but if you are travelling in accordance with the Advance T&Cs, i.e. on the legs shown on your ticket and otherwise "on appropriate connecting trains where shown on the ticket(s) or other valid travel itinerary" (condition 4.4) even with a paper ticket that doesn't list the non-reserved legs. It would be obvious that you were not travelling on your booked train, if a guard were clued up.

However there is an element of plausible deniability again - nowhere does the ticket explicitly state that the legs not listed have to be undertaken on non-reservable services, and if it doesn't list all booked trains I don't think you can be expected to know which one you were booked on, especially on higher frequency lines.
Click to expand...

For context when reading that comment, ScotRail services between Glasgow and Edinburgh are non-reservable.
 
K

kkong

Member
Joined
8 Sep 2008
Messages
1,126
You could specify an extended interchange time at Edinburgh which meets your needs when booking the Advance ticket.
 
D

davp

Member
Joined
5 Jun 2015
Messages
140
I suspect the advance price from King's Cross to Edinburgh will be the same or very similar to the advance from King's Cross to Glasgow via Edinburgh. If you use the forum's ticket service you can add additional changing time at Edinburgh of several hours if you want to. You will almost certainly have to leave the gateline in Edinburgh anyway to change trains.

If you get on the wrong train (from Edinburgh), and imho get really unlucky, the conductor will charge you a single to Glasgow, which even with a railcard is above the new minimum fare.

I often travel through Edinburgh on connecting advances from stations on one of the Edinburgh-Glasgow lines and frequently not on the booked train to/from Edinburgh - usually within an hour or so of it, and normally to make sure I don't miss a connection. I've never been challenged and I would be surprised if the result of that would be to ask me to pay another fare; although I note in theory they might be entitled to do that. The consequence of having an invalid or no ticket in Scotland is very different to that in England.

I'd suggest booking your ticket through to Glasgow as being a very low risk option.
 
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