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I like to go from Liverpool Lime Street to Colchester on October, 30th (mid day). Should be comfortable rather than cheap.
Liverpool - London Euston: 13:43 -> 16:05 (£31.50, advance)
London Euston Square - London Liverpool Street (£3.00, tube)
London Liverpool Street - Colchester: 16:42 -> 17:39 (£24.00, advance)
Euston to Liverpool Street in 37 minutes might be too optimistic...
Alternative journey planner featuring full schedule details including platforms and connection times, for every passenger train on the National Rail network.
www.brtimes.com
15+15+13 minutes
Your second advance ticket would not be valid for use on a later train because of this also. If you make it, fine, but if not you have no automatic right to use a later service.
30 October is a Friday, which would be helpful for you to have said also, because minimum connection times are different at weekends from weekdays.
I think your biggest risk is trying to claim delay repay – if delayed – having used Oyster to cross London. I'm not sure what the best option is; a Liverpool to Z1 or Z1 to Colchester advance single? (Not that it's not still allowed as far as I know; just that it might take longer to prove how and when you went between London terminals.)
It makes no difference how many tickets are used for the journey.
What matters is that you obtain a valid itinerary. I strongly recommend using a website, such as the forum's site, which will provide you with a valid itinerary for the entire journey, which will ensure that you are covered in the event of delays and be strong evidence of a contract for the entire journey.
The forum's site will allow you to select your choice of seat from the seat selector and it will identify if it's cheaper to split, or not.
If you want to avoid paper tickets to cross London, then go into the advanced options and tick the option to use contactless/Oyster to cross London; providing it's cheaper to do so, you would be given the option of e-tickets to/from the relevant terminals. However if a through fare is cheaper, you'd be offered that instead.
If you want to specify additional interchange time, or to call at a specific station, or change at a specific station, the forum's site allows that too.
And it helps support the running costs of the forum
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I think your biggest risk is trying to claim delay repay – if delayed – having used Oyster to cross London. I'm not sure what the best option is; a Liverpool to Z1 or Z1 to Colchester advance single? (Not that it's not still allowed as far as I know; just that it might take longer to prove how and when you went between London terminals.)
Providing it's a valid itinerary, a claim can be made.
While a passenger can source each ticket by making a separate journey enquiry, I would recommend obtaining a through itinerary as evidence of the overall contract; furthermore, if anyone uses the forum's ticketing site to purchase such a through journey, and is being mistreated by a TOC, I would be keen to help them if at all possible.
If you're willing to risk the advance ticket and/or delay repay, 30 mins is easily enough time to make the Euston to Liverpool street connection provided you don't get completely lost and can walk at an average pace. I've done it in less than 20 mins (platform to platform).
If course, since your first train is an Avanti I wouldn't want to rely on it's timeliness...
Playing with the National Rail journey planner, it looks to me as if getting the 1702 from Liverpool Street will allow the official time to cross London, still has the £24 fare, and gets to Colchester at 1758. Or do you anticipate this to be significantly more crowded (and so less comfortable) than leaving Liverpool Street 20 minutes earlier?
Ontimetrains has the 13:43 Fridays Liverpool to London as being within ten minutes of on time 64% of the time; a one in three chance of having 25 minutes or less to go between termini.
Playing with the National Rail journey planner, it looks to me as if getting the 1702 from Liverpool Street will allow the official time to cross London, still has the £24 fare, and gets to Colchester at 1758. Or do you anticipate this to be significantly more crowded (and so less comfortable) than leaving Liverpool Street 20 minutes earlier?
The forum's site comes up with a change at Stratford by default, but you can change at Liverpool Street if you prefer.
If you are buying elsewhere, then I would use NRE to document the itinerary as evidence that it's a valid through journey, but for future trips, I would recommend buying it as a through journey.
This is because a minority of staff erroneously claim that splitting means it's not one journey, so having a through itinerary and booking confirmation making it very clear it is a through journey can be a good way to shut such staff up (even arguing calmly with such staff, rather than showing them something they can't refute, can result in being told you are being "abusive" and being threatened with removal from the railway etc; I've seen that happen before) and if you are mistreated having bought it as a through journey form us, we would support you.
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