Advance tickets and engineering works

[johntea]

This evening I travelled from Kings Cross to Wakefield. Usually a fairly simple 'catch the booked East Coast service'.

This weekend there appeared to be some form of engineering works going on so the suggested route was 'catch the First Capital Connect service to Peterborough and change there for the booked advance East Coast service'.

This was living hell. I travel on 'rush hour' trains every day, this was ten times worse (Ironically, there were ten times more carriages than you would get round where I live!!!).

I was bored on the above mentioned service so did some research and discovered I could have caught the Kings Cross to York service and changed at Peterborough and still made my advance train booking. The other alternative was if alighting at Stevenage on the First Capital Connect train, there would have been an East Coast service to Leeds from there with a 1 hour wait (This however resulting in a time difference between the Stevenage and Peterborough services of about 3 minutes!).

So has anyone experienced this before? Could a valid reason for using an alternative to the advance booked train be engineering works resulting in heavily overcrowded limited service train services?

 

[alex17595]

There was engineering works north of Peterborough (as you probably have seen) where we had renewed some section of the down slow.

The problem is with Sunday trains being less frequent and starting later everyone piles on to the same trains. What I have seen of the EC trains going past all day (good view when they are at 15mph) they all had people standing in the vestibule.

 

[Danny Dire]

I think the train crew normally turn a blind eye to ap tix when the engineering works overun

 

[Paul Kelly]

A bit more information will be helpful here, but I am going to make a guess. Are you saying you were booked on the 2112 FCC service to Peterborough, where you then changed to the 2256 East Coast to Leeds (arriving Wakefield Westgate 0100)?

If so, then the obvious question to me is not why you were not booked on to the 2100 King's Cross to York service (the answer there is either or both of that it was pick-up only at Peterborough; see here, or simply that it would have resulted in a longer journey time), but why your entire journey was not booked on the train you connected into at Peterborough, which left King's Cross at 2144.

Perhaps the reason might be that this train had no quota left between King's Cross and Peterborough, so the booking engine "helpfully" booked you onto the non-quota-controlled FCC service instead? Which website did you book the ticket with?

Also, it seems a bit cheeky of East Coast to make their 2100 service pick-up only at Peterborough and thus force all Peterborough passengers onto the overcrowded FCC service 12 minutes later - unless the 2100 service was very over-crowded too; was it?

Edit: The previous East Coast train to call at Peterborough, the 1944, was also not shown as doing so (again pick-up only). The previous train to Peterborough was the 1912 (FCC). So two hours' worth of Peterborough passengers were forced onto the 2112 FCC service, despite there being two intermediate East Coast trains (at 1944 and 2100) that also called there.

 

[johntea]

Sorry was a bit tired last night (After getting to Wakefield I had a further fun RRB ride home!) so I didn't provide journey details.

Return journey: 27 Oct 2013
departs London King's Cross at 19:12 travel by Train service provider First Capital Connect to station Peterborough arrives 20:33
departs Peterborough at 21:05 travel by Train service provider East Coast to station Wakefield Westgt arrives 22:33

 

[Paul Kelly]

discovered I could have caught the Kings Cross to York service and changed at Peterborough and still made my advance train booking.

Do you mean the 1944 King's Cross to Newcastle service? Then the reason is it won't have shown up as an option is it was (also) shown in the timetable as pick-up only at Peterborough.

The other alternative was if alighting at Stevenage on the First Capital Connect train, there would have been an East Coast service to Leeds from there with a 1 hour wait (This however resulting in a time difference between the Stevenage and Peterborough services of about 3 minutes!).

I think you've answered your own question there - it resulted in a slightly longer journey time so it didn't offer it to you. Some booking engines are better at offering such alternatives than others. http://www.takethetrain.co.uk/ can be quite good sometimes.

I guess the trains starting in Stevenage probably had some quite cheap advance fares available, because booking engines weren't putting people on them.

 

[Haywain]

Do you mean the 1944 King's Cross to Newcastle service? Then the reason is it won't have shown up as an option is it was (also) shown in the timetable as pick-up only at Peterborough.

This was done to try and reduce overcrowding on the remaining East Coast services. As I understand it, this was only partially successful, and many people were unable to travel at all, due to being unable to get on those trains. So the OP may have been uncomfortable on the FCC service, but at least succeeded in travelling.

 

[Paul Kelly]

Yes I can see that now. I didn't realise there were so many trains starting in Stevenage and Peterborough, but now I remember it being discussed on the forum a while ago. Looks like the midland main line was also affected by engineering work yesterday (St Pancras to Sheffield taking over 3 hours), or else that would likely have been a quicker option for getting from London to Wakefield.

 

[Tetchytyke]

There were significant engineering works at Kings Cross yesterday, with a massively reduced train service between there and Stevenage. Essentially there were 3tph in and out of Kings Cross: 1tph EC to Edinburgh, 1tph FCC to Peterborough and 1tph FCC to Cambridge. The remainder of the train services were terminating at Finsbury Park (FCC & HT) or Stevenage/Peterborough (EC).

Kings Cross to Edinburgh trains were pick-up only at Peterborough; these trains are usually first stop York, so this was an additional stop. This seemed to be pathing as much as anything; most EC services had a booked stop at Peterborough of between 15 and 20 minutes.

Passengers for Leeds were told to catch the FCC service to Peterborough or Stevenage (depending on where the EC service started) and pick up their train there. Passengers for the "stopper" Newcastles also had to do this, though some of them were directed by tube to Finsbury Park to catch the FCC services that originated there. There were 2tph between Finsbury Park and Peterborough on FCC, yet I don't think enough people were directed to the Finsbury Park originators.

The booking engines didn't seem to cope with this very well, but then they never do. On the plus side, it did mean my Leeds to Finsbury Park AP single last night was dirt cheap.