To avoid Virgin's eye watering prices, the North Western only ticket to Birmingham and Liverpool are very attractive, especially if travelling at short notice.
Looking up the itineraries to use this ticket the results to Liverpool are not great:
Many journey planners suggest getting the xx:46 from Euston and changing at Stafford at 00:35. The connecting service to Liverpool that comes from Birmingham also arrives at xx:35 so there is a 35 minute wait at Stafford for the xx:10. Some people might enjoy the fresh air and the leg stretch after being sat down on the train for ages. Although it is not great nor appealing to someone in winter to wait for half an hour in the cold and possibly wet. In total the journey is roughly 3 hours and 24 minutes.
I had hoped that the Euston train running direct between Stafford and Crewe would fix the situation but that doesn't seem to be the case. Looking at Real Time Trains, the service to Liverpool frequently leaves Stafford late which I presume to be because of people holding the doors open or the guard waiting for the last few to sprint their last few metres to the train
I complained about this issue once or twice and it looks like there has been some, although probably coincidental change. In the new May timetable I have noticed that the connecting train will arrive into Stafford at xx:38 allowing 3 minutes to dash over to the connecting train to Liverpool. In some cases making the change at Crewe is possible as the Euston service arrives at xx:55 and the Liverpool at xx:57 although two minutes is realistically not long enough. Some of my friends have done this and call the change "The Stafford Shuffle"
There is one train per day that makes the journey possible under 3 hours. For some reason the 11:46 from Euston gets to Stafford at 13:30. This extra 5 minutes allows plenty of time for 13:38 connection to be made, bringing down the journey time to 2 hours and 45 minutes. Why can't the rest of the timetable be like this I wonder?
