Potential gateline probability issues

[blakey1152]

Good Afternoon Everyone,
Tomorrow (Friday 28th April) I plan to travel from Abbey Wood to Birmingham New Street with an off-peak return ticket leaving Abbey Wood on the 0617 Elizabeth Line service to Tottenham Court Road and changing to the Northern Line to Euston for the 0710 Avanti West Coast service from Euston to Birmingham New Street.

I've not travelled on this route since the Elizabeth Line opened but I have always had issues at London Bridge when using Southeastern services as it appears the barriers are set to reject all off-peak tickets before 0930 and the gateline staff can be a bit hit and miss as they quite often follow the rule of "if it doesn't work the barrier - its not valid" theory.

What is the likelihood of having issues at Abbey Wood and Euston using the Elizabeth Line/Tube route tomorrow as I fear I may have to allow a bit more time for this?

 

[Watershed]

Good Afternoon Everyone,
Tomorrow (Friday 28th April) I plan to travel from Abbey Wood to Birmingham New Street with an off-peak return ticket leaving Abbey Wood on the 0617 Elizabeth Line service to Tottenham Court Road and changing to the Northern Line to Euston for the 0710 Avanti West Coast service from Euston to Birmingham New Street.

I've not travelled on this route since the Elizabeth Line opened but I have always had issues at London Bridge when using Southeastern services as it appears the barriers are set to reject all off-peak tickets before 0930 and the gateline staff can be a bit hit and miss as they quite often follow the rule of "if it doesn't work the barrier - its not valid" theory.

What is the likelihood of having issues at Abbey Wood and Euston using the Elizabeth Line/Tube route tomorrow as I fear I may have to allow a bit more time for this?

Can't comment about Abbey Wood as I don't know whether the barriers there would simply work on the basis of your ticket having a Maltese Cross, but you certainly won't have any problems at Euston Underground because (from experience) tickets with a Maltese Cross work the barriers there at any time of day. And at Euston NR, Avanti gateline staff will be well aware of the fact that restrictions don't apply on Fridays on most Off-Peak tickets they'll come across.

I wouldn't have said there is any need to allow more time - whilst you'd need to be on the 06:09 from Abbey Wood to have an officially valid connection onto the 07:10 from Euston (it's 35 minutes from arriving at Tottenham Court Road to departing Euston, when starting the transfer before 7am), there's plenty of later services on which you'd still make it. Worst comes to worst, pay for the journey to Euston by contactless or Oyster and contact TfL afterwards to claim back the cost.

 

[island]

Your route does not pass through any Southeastern-managed stations so I cannot envisage any difficulty on that front.

 

[blakey1152]

It all worked out okay in the end. The Elizabeth Line was suffering from severe delays so opted to jump on a Southeastern train to London Bridge and the gates were open