Reading to Paddington: evening peak and journey planner

[EricS]

I know the evening peak restrictions for journeys from Paddington to Reading have been discussed on here before. But I couldn't find anything about the other direction: going to London in the evening.

I planned a journey RDG-PAD leaving 1730 today and returning 1200 tomorrow, on National Rail Enquiries:

http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/timesandfares/RDG/PAD/today/1730/dep/tomorrow/1200/dep

The journey planner doesn't offer an off-peak return for some departures, e.g. the 17:32 or 18:12.

But according to NRE the off-peak return ticket has restriction 5B. I downloaded SVR_5B.pdf from NRE. It lists 20-odd Westbound departures from PAD that the ticket isn't valid for. But as far as I can tell it has no evening peak restriction for the other direction.

Is the journey planner wrong, and can the off-peak ticket be used to go to Paddington during the evening peak?

 

[wintonian]

East Coast is showing the same but it shouldn't be anything to do with evening restrictions to Padding to as its allowing fast non stop trains but baring some stoppers. In any case I am unaware of any ticket that bars travel into Paddington from FGW land in the evening.

 

[Paul Kelly]

This has come up before: http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=58510

The electronic data for restriction 5B used by the booking engines is basically an ugly hack, and bars all all trains departing from Reading within a 2-minute window of every train that should be barred. Specifically, the 17:32 departure to Paddington clashes with the 17:32 to Penzance, and the 18:12 to Paddington clashes with the 18:11 to Swansea.

 

[wintonian]

This has come up before: http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=58510

The electronic data for restriction 5B used by the booking engines is basically an ugly hack, and bars all all trains departing from Reading within a 2-minute window of every train that should be barred. Specifically, the 17:32 departure to Paddington clashes with the 17:32 to Penzance, and the 18:12 to Paddington clashes with the 18:11 to Swansea.

Hmm what's the advance availability like on these mistakenly barred trains I wonder? I mean if people think there not allowed to use them is there more space?

 

[SickyNicky]

Hmm what's the advance availability like on these mistakenly barred trains I wonder? I mean if people think there not allowed to use them is there more space?

The "hacks" referred to by Indigo2 only refer to certain restriction codes, which don't include advance tickets, so there won't be a problem.

However, these restriction codes also ban quite a few other legitimate journeys - for example Off Peak and Super Off Peak tickets to Hereford via Evesham are valid on any train, even in the peak, but booking engines don't allow them. This leads to the absurd situation where stations have to manually issue reservations for these trains because even their TIS doesn't think they're valid.

 

[wintonian]

The "hacks" referred to by Indigo2 only refer to certain restriction codes, which don't include advance tickets, so there won't be a problem.

However, these restriction codes also ban quite a few other legitimate journeys - for example Off Peak and Super Off Peak tickets to Hereford via Evesham are valid on any train, even in the peak, but booking engines don't allow them. This leads to the absurd situation where stations have to manually issue reservations for these trains because even their TIS doesn't think they're valid.

Yes but people who buy off-peak tickets online will be under the impression that they can not travel on these services, as a result there in theory will be less people on these trains. Less people on trains mean more AP's being available.

Get me?

 

[SickyNicky]

Get me?

Yep - do now. In my experience there's very little (if any) availability of advances between Paddington and Newport in the peak, and when there is it's almost as expensive as a flexible ticket.

But yes - I'm sure some people are put off using these services because of the supposed restriction. It would be interesting to look at loadings.

 

[EricS]

The electronic data for restriction 5B used by the booking engines is basically an ugly hack, and bars all all trains departing from Reading within a 2-minute window of every train that should be barred.

Thanks for that info. I'm shocked that the implementation is such a kludge!