First Great western £5 off tickets??

[northernrail2009]

First great western are doing there £5 off tickets offer till June 30th but does anyone know if they will extend the offer like they have done before?

 

[googolplex]

One thing I found with their £5 off promotion was that some of the cheaper advance tickets weren't showing up, but if I went in from the homepage rather than through the promotional page, they did show up. So it's something to watch out for.
Not sure if they'll be continuing it.

 

[moonrakerz]

Another slight oddity to watch out for. Today, the FGW home page says that (all ?) tickets can be purchased up to Sept 2nd.
However, tickets can actually be purchased up to Sept 12th - BUT, Advance tickets can only be purchased up to the 2nd - except for the BTM to Waterloo service which goes up to the 9th Sept.

My brain hurts !!

 

[northernrail2009]

Another slight oddity to watch out for. Today, the FGW home page says that (all ?) tickets can be purchased up to Sept 2nd.
However, tickets can actually be purchased up to Sept 12th - BUT, Advance tickets can only be purchased up to the 2nd - except for the BTM to Waterloo service which goes up to the 9th Sept.

My brain hurts !!

I didnt even know there was a BTM TO WATERLOO service!!!!!!

 

[First class]

Isn't this the SWT Penzance-Waterloo Sunday weekly service?

 

[moonrakerz]

I didnt even know there was a BTM TO WATERLOO service!!!!!!

Oh yes ! and very useful it is too. It is operated by SWT, I get 3 through trains a day from Warminster to Waterloo.
Advance, on my Railcard, I can get a First Class return (2 X Singles) for £21, Standard for £11.90, less any voucher offers.
It isn't the fastest train in the world, but it is clean and reasonably comfortable (159s) and will give you over 7 hours in London on a day trip. As long as you remember to get in the rear three coaches at Waterloo, otherwise you end up in Honiton !!

See map at bottom:

http://www.southwesttrains.co.uk/SWTrains/Ticketsandprices/Ticket+types/AdvancedFares.htm

 

[F Great Eastern]

Yeah, you can use the five pounds off on any service, doesn't have to be FGW

 

[yorkie]

There's no such place as BTM, and for anyone not knowing there is a Bristol (BRI) to Waterloo service they may be bafled as to where 'BTM' means as it wouldn't be obvious! If people can please use correct 3 letter CRS codes that would be greatly appreciated and make it a lot easier for people to look these places up!

The correct codes are used in LDB, Avantix Traveller, Thetrainline & Atos Origin booking engines and other places too, and if you put "BTM" into LDB then its best guess is Bedwyn. Similarly BNS is Barnes. Another annoying one is when people say something like "Norwich to LLS" which actually means Llanishen but you have to be a mindreader to work out if they actually mean Liverpool Lime St or London Liverpool Street (there are direct trains to both from Norwich). If correct codes are used then people who know the code can instantly know where it is, and if not it can easily be looked up.

 

[moonrakerz]

There's no such place as BTM, and for anyone not knowing there is a Bristol (BRI) to Waterloo service they may be bafled as to where 'BTM' means as it wouldn't be obvious! If people can please use correct 3 letter CRS codes that would be greatly appreciated and make it a lot easier for people to look these places up!

The correct codes are used in LDB, Avantix Traveller, Thetrainline & Atos Origin booking engines and other places too, and if you put "BTM" into LDB then its best guess is Bedwyn. Similarly BNS is Barnes. Another annoying one is when people say something like "Norwich to LLS" which actually means Llanishen but you have to be a mindreader to work out if they actually mean Liverpool Lime St or London Liverpool Street (there are direct trains to both from Norwich). If correct codes are used then people who know the code can instantly know where it is, and if not it can easily be looked up.

I do offer my most humble apologies to someone who is obviously far more au fait with the intricacies of the rail system that me - a mere passenger, or should that be "customer" in rail speak ?
I shall spend all my waking hours ensuring that I fully understand LDB, Avantix and Atos before I dare mention that the 0850 from BRI to WAT passes through WMN, next stop SAL !

I actually put BTM because I forgot that I was posting on such a "correct" nationwide forum, being more used to my local parochial forum, down yer in the West Country !

PS: There are 2 "f"s in baffled

 

[tony_mac]

As a mere passenger, and not familiar with most of the rail network, I agree with yorkie.
It wasn't immediately obvious to me what BTM meant as I had no idea what area you were talking about.
I sometimes find the three letter abbreviations a bit of a pain unless the station has been mentioned in the thread. At least, with the correct codes, I can look it up if I have to, but it's not that hard to just put the name of the station in.

As far as I'm concerned it's got nothing to do with being "correct" but it is a question of making the forum more understandable. As you point out 'rail speak' is hard for the rest of us to follow, so why make it even harder?

 

[HSTfan!!!]

BTM is actually recognised in TOPS/TRUST as Bristol Temple Meads as well as BRI

 

[metrocammel]

To be fair, from an 'enthusiast' perspective, 'BTM' is a far more common description for Temple Meads than 'BRI'. Using the same logic, 'BNS' is very widely used in moves books, and I doubt many bashers would ever write 'BHM' into them.

To avoid complication completely, I would recommend using full station names- rather than a hotch-potch of correct and incorrect codes. At the end of the day, if a 'normal' was to read this forum, and see codes such as BTM, BRI, BHM etc, they wouldn't have a clue what was being discussed- effectively, to them, CRS codes would be jargon- and I believed that the ticketing section was supposed to be 'normal user friendly'?!

 

[moonrakerz]

CRS codes would be jargon

CRS ? is that a TLA ?

 

[Mojo]

If people want to use codes then you could put tags around the code which takes you to the station information page on the NR website and lets you see what the station name is. Eg: [stn]SHH[/stn] (quote my message to see what I've done).

You could also create a bookmarklet for Firefox to either Live Departure Boards or station information for quick access!

 

[glynn80]

If people want to use codes then you could put tags around the code which takes you to the station information page on the NR website and lets you see what the station name is. Eg: [stn]SHH[/stn] (quote my message to see what I've done).

You could also create a bookmarklet for Firefox to either Live Departure Boards or station information for quick access!

Couldn't some programming be done so that automatically this occurs?

 

[metrocammel]

CRS ? is that a TLA ?

Yes, however, they can also be called NRS* codes :P


*National Reservation System or
Computer Reservation System.

The 4-number code can be used in Avantix, and is printed on the right hand side of tickets is known as the 'NLC' (or National Location code)

There are also STANOX codes which are 6 digit codes that in theory identify every station, junction, depot or siding on the British railway network (but not places remote from the railway unlike other codes- ie, most, if not all Rail-appointed Travel Agents have NLC codes, and some bus stations have NRS/CRS codes!)