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As someone who had to put up with three years of every day getting grief from passengers over a northbound (away from London) evening peak that the pricing TOC had no business introducing. "Not allowed" doesn't always translate into "prevented from doing"

If I thought that removing Manchester as a permitted route would mean a reduction on Liverpool fares, then I'd support it. But somehow I don't trust Virgin to do that. By the way, it should be noted that a fair number of intermediate stations on flows priced by Virgin pay more for Anytime...

I don't see it catching on much round this town. Especially if the Virgin easement doesn't apply. Expanding the Network Railcard area, even if it's just to the towns it stops short of (Rugby, Peterborough, Ipswich etc) would be more useful.

Well, who knows what the Fares Change will bring in terms of restrictions. But proceeding on the assumption that it will stay the same. They can now use those trains to split ticket at Milton Keynes and take advantage of the fact that Virgin was forced to drop it's evening peak from MK last year

1U43 will have a lot more room available soon, regardless of 4 coach or 8 coach. As all the Milton Keynes commuters who overcrowd that train are going to want to get on what will now be 9S93 to Edinburgh

Well, Off-Peak from Milton Keynes to North Wales used to be unrestricted as well until Virgin turned around and changed the code. Guess they must've forgotten about Berkhamsted/Hemel/Apsley cluster

One major change I've noticed is that all Anglo-Scottish from Milton Keynes has to be via Carlisle. Using East-West connections to travel via ECML is not permitted anymore. Well if that's the case, then Off-Peak to Scotland should go back to being unrestricted as it was before.

Something a little more concrete. I've got an old South Central timetable from 2003 that was recovered from Milton Keynes travel centre. On the back, it advertises PriceBuster (Now Super Off-Peak) with four zones of £6, £8, £10 and £12.50. Now the prices are £8.70, £12, £14.20 and £16.90

There is no policy or instruction enforcing this rule whilst I've been working this line. Looking at the list, the Exceptions seem to originate from Sectorisation days when issuing a reservation was more involved. The blanket ban before 10:00 looks to be a Network SouthEast thing, whilst the...

I discovered something a lot simpler: Bedford - Preston SVR Route: Not London £77.50 Restriction Code 2T (Any train after 04:15) Saves £82.40 over the SOS+SVS combo which is normally sold

It's one of the biggest traps an announcer can fall into is running through the stops way too fast. Often needing to pause for breath at odd points. Example. I went to the LG arena for events two nights on the trot. I arrived at about 18:00 or so (doors open at 19:30) and was hanging...

Well, not Underground-only station to Underground-only station. You can do it if it's from a station that has National Rail and Underground to a Zone U destination, and vice versa. Route is Via Underground/DLR (00998)

Yes and yes, in that order. But if anyone dares to use a sundry, Accounts come down on them like a ton of bricks. All our accountancy is manual and on paper. We also still don't have the barcode scanners and auto-warrant system, even though the hardware has been sitting in storage for two...

One place you won't see these is London Midland booking offices. As even though there is no explicit prohibition in writing, we're effectively banned from using them. Want to pay your £10 fee by card? Then we have to dig out the old manual voucher. :roll:

With Milton Keynes - Euston/Travelcard, we've had an LM Only - and before that Silverlink Only - since at least 2001 while both respective companies have been the lead operator. So it's not unknown.

That is what these smartcards are for, in the TOC's eyes. To finally get rid of us booking office staff. Where Operations requires dispatch staff, they'll still be there. But the rest of us are not going to be kept if we're not bringing in money.

But if there is no service with the relevant TOC for 44 minutes each hour, that effectively eliminates choice. So may as well go the whole hog. Besides, I've noticed people here are more inclined to have the Any Permitted these days as they're not travelling as often. An Off-Peak Day Return...

This is going to cause a lot of grief at the booking office with the Virgin fanatics. Hopefully this provides the impetus to get rid of the TOC-specific walk-ups between Milton Keynes and Euston/Travelcard in January. For the number one fare flow, it should be one price for each ticket type...

I have a feeling that TOCs may go ahead and lower the single prices, but then eliminate all the remaining advances on the flow that survived the price drop.

Annuals are weekly X 40 so: MKC - London Zones 1-6: £137.50 x 40 = £5500.00 MKC - London Zones 2-6: £115.20 X 40 = £4608.00 Daily Travelcards with railcard discount: Virgin Trains Only (On weekdays, these are no use between 07:15 and 09:18 out, or 15:44 - 18:42 return) £22.05 X 5 =...