EMT Sunday Advance Purchase Tickets

[ashworth]

What has happened to the avialbility of Advance Purchase tickets between London St Pancras and Nottingham? There used to be no problem in obtaining these tickets with MML especially for early afternoon depratures from London.

I would like to go down to London for a weekend in Januuary or February and whilst there are loads of cheap fares available for the journey down on Friday afternoons (even peak time tickets) there is nothing for any Sunday for the return journey.

I have had this problem on numerous occasions over the past year. Usually I end up buying a ticket for the journey down on Friday and end up getting one back from King's Cross, changing at Grantham, because EMT tickets are never available. It's no use taking the risk of booking the outward journey and then waiting for the return journey tickets to become available because often they never do and then you have lost the chnace of the tickets via Grantham.

There's nothing available for Sunday afternoons in Jan or Feb and all the cheap hotel rooms are now beginning to go!
But if I wait will the situation be any better for March?

 

[yorkie]

They may not be released yet.

Also EMT tends to run few services on Sundays. A few times I've done journeys like St Pancras to Leeds that have taken 5 hours or so, and it's been quite busy despite being about as fast as a milk float because there just aren't many trains.

My advice would be to go with NXEC rather than the outer-suburban railway that treats its customers like dirt.

 

[Guinness]

My advice would be to go with NXEC rather than the outer-suburban railway that treats its customers like dirt.

I quite like that description

 

[Techniquest]

I'd prefer not to travel with either of them, neither of them are exactly customer friendly.

 

[yorkie]

with apologies to proper outer-suburban railways, like the Metropolitan Railway, of course!

I'd prefer not to travel with either of them, neither of them are exactly customer friendly.

NXEC are downgrading from GNER days but they're not too bad. It's just a minority of guards who give them a bad name. They are very professional when it comes to releasing tickets, timetabling, etc.

 

[Techniquest]

Well, I suppose out of the two NXEC are more customer orientated than EMT. At least NXEC's timetable alterations tell you what traction to expect (unlike EMT's timetables which are supposed to tell you but actually don't!), where the engineering works are and give you the timetable of alterations.

But in terms of being enthusiast friendly, neither of them are any good.

 

[AlexS]

I'm sure the traction is an irrelevence to most customers, but in any case, in the printed versions of the new timetable, each train is described as HST or MER.

 

[ashworth]

They may not be released yet.

Also EMT tends to run few services on Sundays. A few times I've done journeys like St Pancras to Leeds that have taken 5 hours or so, and it's been quite busy despite being about as fast as a milk float because there just aren't many trains.

My advice would be to go with NXEC rather than the outer-suburban railway that treats its customers like dirt.

Whilst I appreciate the fact that they might not have been released yet, my question is why since EMT took over are they never releasing Sunday afternoon tickets much in advance when MML you could usually get them up to 3 months in advance.

 

[class 313]

They may not be released yet.

Also EMT tends to run few services on Sundays. A few times I've done journeys like St Pancras to Leeds that have taken 5 hours or so, and it's been quite busy despite being about as fast as a milk float because there just aren't many trains.

My advice would be to go with NXEC rather than the outer-suburban railway that treats its customers like dirt.

I've never been treated like dirt from EMT, quite the opposite. Also, yes EMT run fewer services as do most TOC's on Sunday. But more than just a 'few' services.

 

[richa2002]

Never been treated like dirt by EMT?!

Chris Halfpenny.

Apart from that experience though, they are often very pleasant, certainly better than what I've experienced on GNER/NXEC over the years on average.

 

[class 313]

Never been treated like dirt by EMT?!

Chris Halfpenny.

Apart from that experience though, they are often very pleasant, certainly better than what I've experienced on GNER/NXEC over the years on average.

Well yes, like Yorkie says there's always the exceptions.

 

[Techniquest]

I'm sure the traction is an irrelevence to most customers, but in any case, in the printed versions of the new timetable, each train is described as HST or MER.

At least they're planning on putting it in this time then...

 

[P156KWJ]

the only timetbale they did without them was version 2 recently whilst Bradway Tunnel is repaired. I think they are doing this to try and encourage people to book with megatrain.com as well.