If you can get the journey planner on nationalrail.co.uk (or an accredited retailer) to show it as valid for travel via Warrington, it's a permitted route.
Not surprisingly, NRE says you'd need to buy multiple tickets as it's planned Engineering Work. That said, travel via Warrington also takes about fifteen minutes
longer than taking the bus from Stockport.
If you want to do a Routeing Guide check, there are two questions to look at before going deeper:
- Is it a direct train?
- Is it the shortest route (or within three miles of the shortest route?)
In this case, the answer to both of those questions is no.
To do a full
routeing guide check, the first thing you need to do is look up the possible routeing points for the origin and destination.
Stone has three potential routeing points:
- Rugeley Trent Valley
- Stafford
- Stoke-on-Trent
Manchester is a Group Routeing Point.
To determine which Routeing Points are appropriate for Stone, you need to compare the September 1996 Single fare from Stone to Manchester with those from each of the possible routeing points to Manchester. You can use any where the fare is the same or lower than that from Stone.
Stone - Manchester was £6.40 Single in September 1996
Rugeley Trent Valley - Manchester was £11.00
Stafford - Manchester was £11.00
Stoke-on-Trent - Manchester was £6.40
So only Stoke-on-Trent is a valid routeing point.
You then need to look at possible map combinations between Stoke-on-Trent and Manchester. In this case there's only one, map SK.
That map only shows the direct route via Stockport as being valid.